Back in October, the team at Rovio Mobile launched a new game in their ever-popular catalog: Angry Birds Halloween. Now the birds are back in Angry Birds Seasons, a free upgrade to the Halloween game adding 25 new levels for the month of December!
Back in August, developer Rovio announced it had gained more than 6.5 million paid downloads on Apple’s app store with the iPad version owning over 200,000 of those sales. More of the same thing can surely only be good, and Rovio have achieved that.
Why are these Birds so Angry?
If you own an iOS device, it must be hard not to know of Angry Birds. Nevertheless, here’s a quick rundown. Angry Birds is a simplistic game that hit the App Store to be come one of the most popular paid apps. The storyline is a group of green pig-like creatures have stolen eggs from the birds, which in turn makes them “angry”. In order to extract revenge, the birds seem to sacrifice themselves in order to kill the pigs. The aim of the game is to destroy the pigs with the least amount of birds whilst trying to gain points at the same time.
Trick or Treat
It may seem cumberstone to try and write a review on Angry Birds as a franchise now that it’s grown to such a tremendous size. And it’s still difficult to attempt a review of a differently-themed version of the same game. Luckily though, Rovio has added some new treats in the center of 45 new halloween levels.
Treats? No. Only pigs!
Each of the 45 new levels in the Halloween game offer a new Halloween-style branding to them, complete with bare trees, floating lamps and pumpkins. Initially, this theme starts off with the fairly easy, red-bird-only level with a simple one-pig goal. However, this quickly accelerates into much harder levels at a faster pace than the original game.
Similar to the watermelons we saw in the original game, most of these levels are infested with the cliche jack-o-lantern which offers the player more points if squashed. In terms of gameplay, the game is just more of what we love with little additions. If you’re akin to the play-one-then-move-on attitude of the previous Angry Birds, you’ll feel right at home as you try to progress.
Angry App-vent Calender
Personally, I was a late adopter to this version of the game but the news of a Christmas update to the Halloween game persuaded me to buy. The second theme entitled “Season’s Greedings” adds a 25 new levels which is fifteen shy of the Halloween game. In an advent calender style, a level of the 25 is only playable on and after that day. For example, we can’t dive into level 25 until Christmas day.
Similar to the Halloween theme, there is little gameplay added. The winter theme swaps leafless trees to snow-topped pines and pumpkins to presents.
Merry Bird-mas!
Game Center fun
Angry Birds isn’t multiplayer, yet the Seasons game is a first for iPad owners to get a taste of Game Center for the franchise. Seasons comes with Game Center support whilst Rovio have announced that an update will be available soon for the full game’s GC compatibility.
Angry Birds Seasons is one of the first game center games for iPad
“Why should I pay again?”
Ever since the Halloween game was released, some players have questioned Rovio’s decision to charge an additional $0.99-$1.99 (depending on device). I’m not here to change your view on the situation, but in my opinion, paying an extra dollar or two is nothing. Stack up the price of a traditional console game against the combined price of all Angry Birds games and it’s still far less than half! Then consider the hours of entertainment that those birds will give you and make your own judgement.
Plus, Rovio has already confirmed a Valentines Day’s update to the game and they’d be stupid not to include an Easter update full of chocolate eggs. Unfortunately though, there’s no news on a New Year’s edition with drunken pigs and fireworks.
Conclusion
Taking the lack of significant new gameplay, the game probably only achieves a 4/5 rating in my view but if you’re new to the franchise, expect it to rise to all your expectations and hit a 5/5.
Angry Birds Seasons is available on iOS and Android. This review was based upon the iPad game avaliable for $1.99 on the Apple App Store.