Angry Birds: hero or menace?

cloudeagle

Yes, Angry Birds. Haven't heard of it? In this delightful/terrible game, you hurl charming/annoying birds at pigs and structures to try to get them to collapse in a fun, polished way/knee-jerk ripoff of Crush the Castle. It's been played and thoroughly enjoyed by 250 million/barely glanced at by people hitting the "free" button on smartphones, Google Chrome, PSP/PS3, and other devices coming soon. Rovio, the delightful scamps/egotistical assholes behind this, are commendable/horrible for adding new levels for free every month or so/continuing to churn out the same game and adding a Mighty Eagle microtransaction. Furthermore, this is a game that is leading the charge for the explosive popularity of smartphone games/utterly unimportant in the least, and is amazingly popular/I don't know anyone who plays it, so no one does.

In other words, go ahead and praise/slag the game and get it out of your systems here instead of getting into explosive arguments over it in other threads.

Skull2185

Cloudeagle you fool!

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

Bethryn

Played the Chrome version, 3*d most levels.

It was decent fun, about the quality of Kongregate games (not a condemnation, just a comparison).

jackal

Oh, hey.
repost:

I don't get the love for Angry Birds. The tiniest difference in angle can mean the difference between a piggie death machine and a totally ineffectual hit. I'm not saying skill has nothing to do with it (especially with the activation of abilities), but it feels like there is a cycle of 'play until you happen to win a level -> false sense of accomplishment -> repeat'.

UncleSporky

Angry Birds is basically Tetris. Both are on every platform ever and neither are really threatening to other brands.

Rhesus Positive

This whole argument smacks of your rural grandparents complaining how the vidja games are going to be the death of the book industry, or how VHS rental will kill cinemas.

Fizban140

UncleSporky wrote:

Angry Birds is basically Tetris. Both are on every platform ever and neither are really threatening to other brands.

Nooooooooooooooooo!

Angry birds is not in any way at all like Tetris. Tetris takes skill and precision, Angry Birds basically just requires patience. If you play Angry Birds enough times you will eventually beat the level or get the 3 stars. A lot of the levels are luck based and the gameplay is pretty poorly though out. Instead of learning from your mistakes you basically just keep playing until you get lucky. There is no way to measure angles so you have to guess every time, there is very little learning in this game.

jackal

Fizban140 wrote:

UncleSporky wrote:

Angry Birds is basically Tetris. Both are on every platform ever and neither are really threatening to other brands.

Nooooooooooooooooo!

Angry birds is not in any way at all like Tetris. Tetris takes skill and precision, Angry Birds basically just requires patience. If you play Angry Birds enough times you will eventually beat the level or get the 3 stars. A lot of the levels are luck based and the gameplay is pretty poorly though out. Instead of learning from your mistakes you basically just keep playing until you get lucky. There is no way to measure angles so you have to guess every time, there is very little learning in this game.

I agree with this. Although it looks like you are arguing different points.

surrealitycheck

This game is fucking sick

you fire birds at pigs

anybody who has any opinion that involves more words than this is overthinking it

Warlock82

The only problem I have with Angry Birds is how much of a goose its creator is.

Rhesus Positive

I think I must have been playing a different Angry Birds to you guys. I was sure that there was at least a bit of strategy - working out which struts are the load-bearing ones, where the different types of birds would do the most collateral damage, stuff like that. The same with Crush the Castle.

mr_mich

Why is this game so popular? Weren't there like dozens of games just like it that came out in the past 10 years?

cloudeagle

surrealitycheck wrote:

This game is fucking sick

you fire birds at pigs

anybody who has any opinion that involves more words than this is overthinking it

You'd be shocked at the heated, ginormous arguments that have broken out on this board because of the game, then.

Ragnar Dragonfyre

The greatest explanation of this game came from my friends 6 year old. I was suggesting games to her that her son could play and when I mentioned this game, she shook her head and her son just jumped in. She was shocked he knew. I laughed.

"Do you know Angry Birds?"

"Ya! That's the game where you shoot birds at green piggies!"

jackal

mr_mich wrote:

Why is this game so popular? Weren't there like dozens of games just like it that came out in the past 10 years?

Angry Birds has more style than all of them combined. The graphics and sound and intros are all really stylish and well put together. (I still think the game is mostly a fart though).

Basil

Shooting birds at Pigs?

That sounds neat.

If that had been the tag line on an advert I might have tried it.

Dunxco

Never played Angry Birds so I can't really comment.

Except to say that I don't get the love, or the hate. It is a game. A game is a game is a game. Sounds like a good game to pass the time by waiting for something to happen though.

Skull2185

I tried the "lite" version on my iPhone a while back. i personally didn't understand why everyone was going ape shit for it, but I don't really hate on it. I would love to create some simple thing that the public latches onto and make millions and keep milking for millions.

beanie babies
silly bandz
angry birds

I'm mad jelly I didn't think of em first.

SteevL

Got the free version for my phone a few months ago. Seemed OK, but it obviously didn't hook me like a lot of other people.

KitAlexHarrison

jackal wrote:

Angry Birds has more style than all of them combined. The graphics and sound and intros are all really stylish and well put together.

Agreed. The artwork and music are really quite charming too.

jackal wrote:

(I still think the game is mostly a fart though).

A fart that Rovio have been keeping on going for a very long time. I saw a discussion on the forums a few days ago musing what Rovio will do when sales start to decline (owing to literally everyone having a copy), though I have heard rumours of a spin-off involving the pigs.

Passive-Aggressive Pigs?

Fizban140

My problem with the game is the low level of thought and skill put into it. It isn't a game that you can really just much better at, you just sometimes get lucky or you just grind out the levels until it happens right. It isn't fun. Some people can just enjoy the knocking shit over aspect of it and some are fooled by the game into thinking there is some sense of accomplishment for beating a level. I disagree, usually I know right away how to beat a level and then I try for 10-30 or so turns to get it just right to 3 star it, it isn't fun it is luck by repition. A good example of a game that doesn't do this is the learn to fly games, simple, casual and there is a good amount of strategy and skill in them.

Gaslight

Angry Birds is an inspiring(?) story of how sometimes you be wildly successful and make bajillions of dollars through dumb luck. It's no better or worse than untold numbers of random flash games scattered in every book and cranny of the internet and somehow the stars aligned and it became a cultural phenomenon.

It is, in and of itself, not a "threat" to other brands or "real" video games as we know them or whatever, the danger it presents is that developers and publishers will invest time and resources into trying to duplicate it when there's really nothing much there at the core to duplicate.

darleysam

KitAlexHarrison wrote:

jackal wrote:

Angry Birds has more style than all of them combined. The graphics and sound and intros are all really stylish and well put together.

Agreed. The artwork and music are really quite charming too.

jackal wrote:

(I still think the game is mostly a fart though).

A fart that Rovio have been keeping on going for a very long time. I saw a discussion on the forums a few days ago musing what Rovio will do when sales start to decline (owing to literally everyone having a copy), though I have heard rumours of a spin-off involving the pigs.

Passive-Aggressive Pigs?

Smug Pigs. You have to place them out, then tap the screen to make them grin at exactly the right time to enrage the player.
I have AB on my Hero, it plays like arse, but it's a decent time-waster. I don't love it to bits, but I don't hate it either. I reckon it just got lucky with its (YES IT'S NOT ORIGINAL) gameplay and presentation, and has snowballed from there.

Fizban140

Not just that but it has set a low standard of gameplay for mobile gaming, there are dozens of clones and games trying to emulate it and its success with a similar approach of low level low thought gameplay. The less challenge it presents the better.

surrealitycheck

You'd be shocked at the heated, ginormous arguments that have broken out on this board because of the game, then.

Overthinking it is this forum's stock-in-trade

pablo_price

Angry Birds is pretty fun and only $1.
It is not the herald of some dark age of ultra-casual games destroying the actual game market.
Miyamoto is not scrapping the latest Marios and Zeldas to make iphone games.
Microsoft is not burning down mountains of xboxen and copies of the halos to make room for the new play-it-on-the-toilet division.

If anything, the Angry Birds model is much less evil than say, Zynga's policy of ripping off an actual console game and jamming it super full of micro-transactions.

Automaticzen

Gaslight wrote:

It is, in and of itself, not a "threat" to other brands or "real" video games as we know them or whatever, the danger it presents is that developers and publishers will invest time and resources into trying to duplicate it when there's really nothing much there at the core to duplicate.

This is the core truth and why people are talking about it.

Mojo_Jojo

I have played far worse free games. It's a great way to fill stray minutes when I'm out and out. And the seasonal level packs keeps it fresh.

It might have been more interesting to actually make a thread about the recognition of the brand itself.

Ziggymon

I always thought it would be cool to see a multiplayer version ala Worms style, because the setting and presentation of Angry Birds is really good.

Ragnar Dragonfyre

Are people still actually trying to copy the success of Angry Birds? I know this was true for around a year after it released, but I thought that wild goose chase had ended awhile ago.

I was under the assumption that people had accepted that their can be only one (Angry Birds)!

Magic Pink

Skull2185 wrote:

Cloudeagle you fool!

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

cloudeagle: hero or menace?

UncleSporky

Cloudeagle is basically Tetris.

Vegan

I'm sure it's a fine game but I don't understand why it became a phenomenon over anything else.

I got 60 iOS games but an Angry Birds ain't one.

Alfred J. Kwak

I liked Crash the Castle so I guess I'd enjoy Angry Birds as well

what I can't believe is that this game made several millions

jackal

It is silly to try to reproduce Angry Birds success by cloning Angry Birds, but the concept of finding a moderately successful type of game and polishing it with good art and marketing is probably still sound. (see also Plants vs Zombies).

mere_immortal

It's fun.

Just like all the other free Android games I've tried.

Still baffled by it's popularity though.

cloudeagle

Believe it or not I haven't really seen any straight-up Angry Birds clones on iOS (or at least ones that do well enough to show up in the top 50).

The Reverend Dr Galactus

jackal wrote:

Oh, hey.
repost:

I don't get the love for Angry Birds. The tiniest difference in angle can mean the difference between a piggie death machine and a totally ineffectual hit. I'm not saying skill has nothing to do with it (especially with the activation of abilities), but it feels like there is a cycle of 'play until you happen to win a level -> false sense of accomplishment -> repeat'.

This is a surprisingly potent formula. It's pretty much exactly what made Peggle so successful and addictive: It's a game of luck that you can influence with skill. You can be extremely lucky or extremely skillful, but most win through a combination of both.

...JUST LIKE LIFE.

Brym

jackal wrote:

It is silly to try to reproduce Angry Birds success by cloning Angry Birds, but the concept of finding a moderately successful type of game and polishing it with good art and marketing is probably still sound. (see also Plants vs Zombies).

This. Were I an iOS developer, I would hire a few talented artists and just start cranking out pretty-looking remakes of every flash game anyone ever liked.

As for the Birds themselves, it's an okay-but-flawed game whose popularity is baffling given that there are hundreds of higher-quality games on iOS.

Brym

The Reverend Dr Galactus wrote:

jackal wrote:

Oh, hey.
repost:

I don't get the love for Angry Birds. The tiniest difference in angle can mean the difference between a piggie death machine and a totally ineffectual hit. I'm not saying skill has nothing to do with it (especially with the activation of abilities), but it feels like there is a cycle of 'play until you happen to win a level -> false sense of accomplishment -> repeat'.

This is a surprisingly potent formula. It's pretty much exactly what made Peggle so successful and addictive: It's a game of luck that you can influence with skill. You can be extremely lucky or extremely skillful, but most win through a combination of both.

...JUST LIKE LIFE.

This is very true. Most nongamers don't want a game that requires very much skill. If they did, they would be gamers.

Slimcea

Plants vs Zombies is different though. There's considerably much more gameplay in it (Story Mode, Challenges etc), strategies used differ vastly on which plants you bring to a level etc.

Angry Birds.. well it's just a cultural phenomena I guess. I've 3 starred most levels, and it was pretty much - try this angle. No good? Restart level. No explaining how something like that got so popular actually.