Addictive, entertaining, lengthy and cheap. Angry Birds carves a perfect space that is suitable for your iPhone.
Hopefully I have already convinced you and if I had a choice I would shut you off right now and just fill the rest of this review with youtube video links of birds that happen to have made its way into indoor space causing all sorts of shenanigans, unfortunately I am here to criticize, so for those that are still cautious (I bet its those that haven't tied their iTunes to a credit card), this review will serve as a forewarning; yes a warning, on whether or not it is 'worth' drilling your time into.
On paper Angry birds will really win you over, I mean, look at it – launching odd looking birds from a slingshot for some colourful destruction against a piglet kingdom, a vivid warner brothers colour palette that is pleasant to look at, an accessible core objective; what is not to like?
Lets just get the most perceptible qualities out of the way – Angry Birds is an exceptionally polished game, you probably wont find an Appstore game at this price with such attention to detail and as clean as this; Sprites and animations are crisp, , the physics act in a logical smooth manner, camera control is fluid, menus are simplistic with a sense of character and good lord, there is even an opening animated cartoon introducing its story which is ingeniously as well as seamlessly accessed externally through a friggin full-screen youtube link, brilliant.
Look at the screenshots. If you haven't figured out from the screens (and two would be enough), Angry Birds follows your 2D ballistic ammo to target mechanic seen in games like Worms and Gunbound (it is even aesthetically similar to those two), however here is the switch, environments aren't destructible and wind isn't the thing stopping you, rather it's a set of physical obstacles and structural compositions that stand in the way of your sheltered objective, thus transforming Angry Birds into a puzzle game, figuring out and exploiting weaknesses.
You have six different kinds of birds to launch by simply using Mr. index finger or Dr. Greenthumb to drag out the slingshot back towards an angle and at a velocity, actually, scratch velocity because anything under full velocity is hard to accurately get right, most of the time I would just go full force at different angles as it just seems more accurate that way. The four birds have their own uses and abilities which is activated by a tap on the screen once the bird is in flight, you have your standard bird, your high speed bird, a cluster bird, a vertical drop bird and an exploding bird (no reference to feeding birds Panadol unfortunately). Each bird also has physical properties; say for example the cluster bird can rip through Ice blocks, the high speed bird can plough through layers of wood blocks, the bomb bird can pummel through almost anything - until it detonates, a green bird which acts as a boomerang and the red bird is well, your useless bouncy one.
(in time of writing, they have just updated in a new big red bird)
The variety of birds offered contributes to the levels puzzle solving as you have to decide what to hit, exploiting weaknesses in materials with the pre-determined birds you are given. It does sound great but it is often frustrating how you can't choose what birds to tackle a specific level or at least set the order of your given 'ammunition'. This means you're left to solve a problem their way instead of yours and if you happen to use your way, expect to not be rewarded with a high score. It doesnt help that the majority of the levels become somewhat formulaic and repetitive; there are levels that trigger off entertaining domino-style set pieces similar to ragdoll blaster 2 and on top of that there are secret golden egg levels that blend in timing, physics and accuracy quite evenly, but don't expect a good number of these to be seen and the latter you have to work for.
It does please me to say that Angry Birds is quite challenging; consistency? or a logical difficulty curve is absent here however. The difficulty comes from its restrictions, you have a finite amount of birds to use in order to wipe the area clean of piglets, so there are brief moments of tension and weight for your remaining bird to hit the final piglet. On top of that there are certain milestones/achievements that are awarded on how well you completed the level – the more birds you've spared and the more destruction to the level the better.
By design, Angry Birds is a perfect fit for the iPhone, it literally IS pick up and play; the zoom and pan controls are tacit/identical with the general interface functions of the iPhone so users are instantly familiar with it and each level can easily carve a space right into whatever else you're doing on the go as there are zero load times. Also there is no background music, besides the ambient bird and piglet sound effects, so you can play this in unison with your MP3 music library and even during an incoming call provided you have a hands-free set.
Angry Birds essentially bundles up into a single coloured ball of yarn. You would pull the same long string and it will stay the same shape, slowly reducing its size. But if you have nothing else to do and you see a fleck of string poking out, you'd might as well pull, and keep pulling until you've had enough of what is nothing short of a mere distraction. Unlike a ball of yarn though is value that is too good to dismiss and chances are, you're friends will have it, which will add a layer of competition with its online leaderboards and social media integration using facebook as well as twitter.
At 30MB you could have easily downloaded and played a few levels in the time of reading this review and since you made a choice to read this far after the first paragraph, hopefully you can decide whether or not all 180 levels of Angry Birds and constant added content updates is worth your time. The one thing that is for certain though is that when simply looking at the pictures, numbers and popularity alone, the choice in whether or not to purchase Angry Birds on the iPhone is the easiest one to make
7/10