Yes the Dragon magazine Template version said if you are a medium size or smaller base creature you adjusted your size up one, which gives a +8 and other stuff to STATS.
This was way over the top for a +1LA.
The one in Savage Speices is a little better balanced. We have two half-ogres in our group and they are great melee fighters.
The one, is a HO, with a Spiked Chain, and all his feats are based around Attacks of Opportunity, thus to even get close to him he gets an AoO most of the time. He is very very good at clearing out large groups of attackers.