Review: Cover Orange HD - Rolling Onto The iPad

Overview

Cover Orange is a physics based spin on Angry Birds, in reverse. This time instead of destroying buildings and pigs, you're goal is to protect helpless oranges from a deadly rain cloud. It's actually a lot of fun, but will it stack up as a worthy replacement to the top game in iOS history?

Features

Cover Orange features familiar physics based gameplay, many stages and Game Center support.

The Good

Cover Orange takes the familiar “crush the building” gameplay from Angry Birds and turns it on its head. Cute oranges are left exposed to be ruined by an evil rain cloud. You have the power to move and drop objects, such as boxes, wagon wheels and planks to cover the vulnerable fruit. After you’ve placed all your armor, the nasty rain cloud flies by, shooting deadly raindrops that kill all the oranges they touch. If you have placed the objects in such a way that all the oranges are protected, you win and move onto the next level. This is an interesting idea and the game is dead simple to play, as the idea takes no time to learn. Stages are nice and the strategies vary in how you have to protect your oranges. You might need to simply drop a box onto a level above an orange to shelter it, or you might need to drop a wagon wheel right on an orange to nudge it so it rolls under cover. In the more advanced levels you'll need to drop a weight onto a plank to release another plank to protect the oranges, as you can see it gets quite challenging. The physics are well done, but still, the game is somewhat luck based. Sometimes items land in such a way that you unexpectedly protect the oranges yet other times almost the exact same movement yields items and oranges falling off cliffs. For a player looking for a skill game, this can be quite irritating. The raincloud's raindrops also bounce and “wiggle”, so sometimes you’re be unlucky and a raindrop will bounce right under a shelter that worked fine last time you played the stage. Graphically the game is well done. The oranges have plenty of cute animations, and the game has a bright cartoony look similar to Angry Birds. Although the game doesn;t have quite teh same level of aesthetic polish as Angry Birds, it is sharp and colorful.

The Bad

Sound on the other hand, is not quite the same experience. In face, Sound-wise the game is poor. The same generic music plays throughout the game and the sounds the oranges make when they are hit get annoying very fast. The raincloud’s corny laugh is particularly grating. The game also has a fairly short lifespan. It lacks the addictive quality and personalty of Angry Birds, or the strategic feel of a game like Tiki Totems 2. After a few stages you've basically seen what you're going to be doing for the rest of the game.

The Verdict

Cover Orange is a decent game with a good idea. Its sightly awkward feel, its sound issues and the somewhat annoying randomness that pervades its gameplay might put some off.  But it's still a fun game and it will certainly appeal to fans of Angry Birds or other physics based puzzlers. Even if you don't love it, I don't think anyone will be demanding a refund.