Jose Zagal's Home Page - Games & Game Studies

Home	Talks and Slides	My GameLog	Research and Projects	Publications	Resume	Teaching
Back // GameBreadth Project // Game Ontology Project // GameLog

Angry Birds (iPd) Status: Finished playing I started playing this game on Monday 5 April, 2010 // I stopped playing this game on: Monday 7 February, 2011
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
July 5, 2010 08:57:35 PM
If a game has been on the top-seller list for the iphone/ipad and a couple of colleagues are raving about it at work, then it must be good, no? Or at least worth looking at. So, I've been "looking" at it for a few months now. I've finished it (all kazillion levels, I guess I should count them), though I've yet to get 3 stars on all of them. The game is absolutely worth the $0.99 I spent on it (get the iphone version, the ipad one is apparently exactly the same), however... So, the game was described to me as especially interesting due to the physics system and how the birds interact with the things they crash into and so on. That's true, but only to a point. In fact I see this game as more of a missed opportunity rather than the best thing ever. And it's because of the physics and the way the game is structured. The game is essentially a linear puzzle game: play a level, beat it and the next one unlocks. The early levels aren't too difficult, which means that there are more than a few different ways to solve them. Also, you don't need to be incredibly precise with the bird flinging. From this perspective, the physics is fine, you get some variety and unpredictability as you play and the results are generally entertaining to watch. This changes radically as soon as you reach the harder levels. At that point, the physics becomes a major drawback. Not only do you need to be incredibly precise as you fling the birds, but you also have to cross your fingers that the unpredictability of the physics won't let you down and force you to start over. Once the puzzles get hard, there's only one way to solve them correctly and you need to be lucky that the physics will help you out. So, why the missed opportunity? Well, the physics is interesting, but there's a lack of open environments where you could play around with the physics. Sort of like a sandbox.

Angry Birds (iPd)