Review: Angry Birds Halloween - Trick Or Treat
by Staff Writer
October 22, 2010
Overview
The Angry Birds are in the holiday spirit setting up for Halloween. These Birds have to be considered enraged with the vigilance to keep coming after these pigs after destroying 195 structures so far through the updates. The physics based puzzle action of slingshotting birds at various structures trying to knock them down to get to pigs now has a spooky theme.
Features
There are 45 brand new levels across three episodes with all seven types of birds unlocked by the time you finish the first episode. The Halloween themed level all have a spooky background, and there are now pumpkins to smash, each worth 3000. Game Center is included for online high scores and achievements and it supports retina display just like the most recent update to the original Angry Birds.The Good
Angry Birds is just a great gaming experience that is super simple to pick up for anyone, and so much fun to enjoy. All you do is pull back and fire, but it becomes extremely complex with the fortresses the pigs have built. Every level plays so differently, and each bird has different attributes, and it’s such an important part of the success.
The Halloween theme is excellently incorporated from the opening theme having a spooky twist, and in level you hear the howls of wolves. The level artwork has a dark and dusk theme with some structures resembling Halloween objects. In most of the levels there are pumpkins whether they’re objects to blast through, acting as pig helmets, or are destructible items for bonus points acting like the pigs.
Angry Birds has a great ability to want you to keep playing over and over, and to not only make it through all the levels, but to get three stars on them. When you finish a level, and you get less than three stars, rather than advancing to the next level you want to replay the level you just beat for a better score. Then there are all the achievements and high score tables via Game Center for a little extra incentive.
The Bad
Angry Birds Halloween is a weird app just because of what Rovio has done with free updates in the past. Now for $1 this a great game that you will thoroughly enjoy, but Rovio has set a precedent to give you everything for free so now the app has 195 levels. In comparison this game is shallow, and many other games are compared to Angry Birds in content regardless of the updates or not. I think it’s smart of Rovio to let users pay them more for all the great work they’ve done, but this feels like an in-app purchase more than a separate app especially when they’ve given free updates of the same size. Does this mean we’re going to see Thanksgiving Angry Birds, and Christmas Angry Birds as separate apps?
Personally though, I would love to fling Turkeys in a Thanksgiving themed Angry Birds. as well as slingshot the 12 birds of Christmas in a Christmas themed Angry Birds. One great feature lacking in this and the original version would be to know the point thresholds for three stars to know if you were close or way off helping you decide whether to replay a level or not.
