Angry Birds

The Good
The gameplay is very simple and straightforward with a nice difficulty curve that allows people to learn all the ropes before they arrive at the hard puzzles that require precision and a complete understanding of the physics in this game. Since the gameplay is rather simply it's of course meant to be played while in the bus or on the toilet, just a few minutes a day (playing it like you would play Call of Duty is going to bore you to death) and that's okay, you know. That's why I have portable game systems, so I can play something quick when the consoles are no available.

The graphics are pretty good and certainly one of the best on the Android phones. It reminded me a lot off Fruit Ninja which isn't coincidence because all the pigs look a lot like watermelons. It isn't really that great and the animation isn't that spectacular and neither is the presentation, but at least it means that there are some companies out there that want to make games for the phones that don't look like Colecovision games.

The Bad
The game is a complete rip-off of the game Crush the Castle which is a browser game found on several websites for FLASH GAMES!!! Just the fact that they dare to charge money for this and then claim that most games are just pieces of plastic for forty dollars should be a crime. Oh and it gets worse...

The game has already been ported to different systems and the company made what I presume to be expansions for it. There is also a big range of toys and t-shirts available in quite a lot of game stores, which is something I have never seen before. This has to be the worst case of milking a license I have ever seen and it's not even a widely popular one, it's just a little flash game. Something tells me the developers are a bit in over their head and suddenly think they rule the gaming industry after producing one game that sold well.

Some of the levels are insanely hard and there is no way to skip one or two and move on with the game. If you are stuck, that means you are really stuck. This wouldn't be a big problem, since a lot of games require the player to get better at the game before he can advance past certain obstacles, but here it starts getting hard around the second set of levels and this is a huge game. There is a total of six worlds each with roughly forty stages and I already got stuck quite often in the first world.

Six stages also means that the game outstays its welcome and it starts to get rather awkward. I would like to move on to other games, but I still got four worlds to go and I hate leaving games unfinished. It's like a friend who comes around and instantly assumes he can just spend the night in your bed.

The Bottom Line
I decided to take another look at this game because I could get it for free which removed the need to demand a refund withing 24 hours, but I can't say that playing it in a more relaxed way helped me enjoy it more. It's still a rip-off and any game that promotes their company's range of toys and links you to their store can go to hell, but even if I would judge this game without thinking about that, it doesn't get more then two starts at best.

It's a very poor flash game that adds nothing new to a concept dozens of free websites have already explored and buying it or any products related to it just promotes laziness and thievery.