Everybody knows the Angry Birds franchise now if they want to or not, since the orignal games are available on just about every device (for free or close to free) and you can't walk into a Wal-Mart without seeing them all over every product in the dang store. Seriously next time you're in a big box store like that, count how many Angry Birds products you see. From pet toys to plushies to adhesive strips, there's nothing they won't put the birds on. So does all this merchandising success lead to a deeper, more engrossing game then the orignal bird flinging sensation?
It is certainly better than regular Angry Birds, Seasons, and Rio, but there's totally room for improvement. The new space/gravity mechanic is pretty fun and requires you to put a little more thought into your flings than the previous titles. Since the game takes place in the cold vastness of space instead of the solid ground of the original, instead of dealing with standard gravity, you use the individual gravity fields of different planets to slingshot your ticked-off avian into those evil pigs and their ramshackle fortresses. Now the pigs also have little spaceyou aships (and weird air bubbles) when floating outside of a planet. I gotta admit, it's pretty awesome to knock a pig's ship into the gravitational pull of a nearby planet and watch it crash horribly into the ground. The changes actually make it feel fresh for the length of the game's 60 packed in levels. Still though, Angry Birds is about 50% skill and 50% luck, so be ready to shoot, watch your shot suck, and hit restart over and over again until you achieve bird shot perfection. That kind of trial and error is sort of annoying, and is probably the biggest flaw in the Angry Birds formula. There's a few new birds, and by a few I mean only one, really. The ice bird is the only completely new one, with the ability to freeze structures to ice which makes them easier to break by other birds. The other new bird the "Laser Bird" is actually just the same as the yellow triangle bird from previous games except you can alter his direction mid-flight-- it's really not that different. The Mighty Eagle is slightly different as well, becoming the "Space Eagle" and creating a black hole destroying the pigs and their structures. It's not an insta-win like the Mighty Eagle, and guess what? They are limited use and of course you can buy more Space Eagles in the in-app store with real money, which seems to me like a cheap money grab when in the original game the Mighty Eagle was a one time purchase. There's also a Space Eagle feather to obtain for destroying 100% of every level you use him on, and if you're OCD you're going to have to spend some serious cash to get all 60 of them. The game occasionally tosses you some free ones, but not enough to be able to get those feathers if you wanted. The Space Eagle button is also dangerously (and suspiciously) close to the menu button, which led me to accidentally use like 3 of them while trying to restart different a levels. Boss fights are another new feature, but they are downright terrible and poorly implemented. The first boss is a pig in a moon buggy you have to knock rocks onto that's mostly luck, and the second boss (currently the final one as well) actually managed to kill himself in my game. I only launched one bird and the pig (who is flying around in a spaceship) managed to seal his own fate by flying into the obstacles I was supposed to knock into him. Adding boss fights to the Angry Birds formula is a brilliant idea, but these bosses aren't any fun and/or are completely broken. Why not give me an unlimited supply (or at least a large amount) of red birds and have me launch them into the weak points of a big pig robot or something? That would work. After completing the game's 60 built in levels, you can buy another set of 30 super-hard ones for an additional $0.99 on top of the $0.99 you already paid. I mean, 99 cents is not a lot and if you loved the game it's probably worth it, but it's still kind of a punch in the balls to have to pay for more content in a game you just bought, especially when you can blow through the game's sixty levels in a couple hours. I guess the game is only 99 cents initially though, so it's not like you're being totally ripped off. It's basically Day 1 DLC though, so if that bugs you (and it doesn't really bother me) this is definitely going to irk you.
The graphics and animation in this game is seriously disappointing. It looks almost identical to the original game, minus some cool character design changes to the birds (the red bird now sports Team Gurren glasses, etc.). You'd think with all the piles of cash Rovio is sitting on from their Angry Birds branded adhesive strips and dog chew toys they could of afforded to give the birds and pigs some more (and better) animations. I'm not asking for super high def 3D crazy graphics or anything, I just feel like there's no reason why these birds couldn't do more stuff and look much better. The cutscenes are also super lame, since they're just comic book-y slideshows. Rovio owns an entire Finnish animation studio, you'd think that they could make some pretty funny cartoon cutscenes for this game, but no. It's just kind of lazy. The sound, while being very similar to the other games, is completely charming, though. I never tire of the funny little sqwaks and calls from our bird heroes. The music is cheery and catchy as well.
So besides some cheap production values (from a company who has to be filthy rich) and really crappy bosses, it's a decent experience. I don't quite understand why people think Angry Birds is the best thing since sliced bread. The only thing I can come up with is that the average Angry Birds fan doesn't play hardly any other video games or hasn't played them since navigating blue mazes in the original Pac-Man, so they don't realize all of the advancements the medium has to offer. I mean if the last thing you played was Galaga, Angry Birds is gonna seem pretty cool by compassion. They just don't know video games can be better, and that they don't have to be frustrating trial and error/ luck based experiences. Angry Birds Space takes some baby steps toward being an awesome full fledged video game experience, but suffers from the aforementioned laziness and a couple bad design choices. But hell, can you imagine how many Angry Birds Adhesive Strips they are going to sell now?
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