Rovio finds your lack of faith disturbing.
When Rovio and Lucasarts announced its Angry Birds-Star Wars tie up, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth from the faithful – that this was somehow a dilution of Star Wars’ prestige.
These people obviously interpreted the TV shows, shocking video games and awful prequel films to somehow be a dignified use of the Star Wars branding.
It is perhaps fitting then that Lucasarts is now a part of the Disney stable – Rovio and Disney are a natural fit – and unsurprisingly, so is this game.
Rovio, perhaps wary of wearing their merchandising cash cow dry following the mediocre Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds seasons (and the clone industry it produced), produced the excellent Angry Birds Space earlier this year, which moved the vintage ‘castle crush’ game mechanics into space utilising planetoids and their gravitational pull to great effect.
Angry Birds Star Wars is basically a greatest hits combination of all of those titles with a Star Wars skirt on – and it works. The cutesy cutscenes and presentation works a treat, but the subtle additions of Star Wars related powers to each character adds a new dimension to the gameplay.
Luke (red bird) gets a lightsabre to swing at bricks and pigs as he flies by, Obi-wan (blackbird) can use the force to push bricks and blocks across the screen, Han (yellow bird) can fire his blaster and Chewbacca throws his weight around much as the big red bird did in old version of the game. The three blue birds split into three much as before and represent the X-wing squadrons in later levels. The Millennium Falcon replaces the eagle from earlier games, while C3PO and R2D2 appear in the bonus games. Strangely, Princess Leia has no role in this game whatsoever… a bit of sexism there from Rovio?
What makes the game more interesting is how Rovio have chosen to utilise these distinct characteristics – this isn’t a straight Star Wars cash in. The game is also no pushover, and is more difficult than previous entries in the series (excluding maybe the later levels of Rio), especially until you get the hang of using each bird’s weaponry.
Many of the walls and bricks in this version of the game are extremely thick – they can’t be smashed by simple contact most of the time. Most importantly, the pigs fight back with blasters and fighters. The strategy come from deflecting laser shots from the pig Storm Troopers into the walls, or bouncing Han’s blaster off the walls.
This makes for a more interesting game play style – especially since, as mentioned earlier, the game alternates between ‘ground levels’ and the space levels. The Darth Vader level in particular, is an innovative use of every birds unique powers and proves quite tricky to pull of a 3-star effort – Vader’s uses the force to hold bricks in front of him for protection.
My only real complaint with the game is the lack of diversity in backgrounds – the first half of the game basically occurs in Tatooine, and the rest in space. Yes, I am aware that much of the film does this too, but it does get repetitive very quickly.
Rovio has wisely decided to release the entire Star Wars saga in a single game, instead of attempting to cash up by doing three separate games. You get 80 levels here and now (around 4 hours of gameplay – more if you try to 3 star every level), and Hoth, from The Empire Strikes Back, is waiting on the menu for a later release (no charge). Dagobah is also available as an in app purchase (IAP) now for £1.49 – users can also buy extra Millennium Falcons in app from £1.49 for 20.
This isn’t as much of an IAP imposition as you’d think – neither of these purchases are necessary to complete the game – and Angry Birds fans have gotten use to this over the past few editions.
Angry Birds Star Wars will no doubt sell millions (it already sits at the top of the Apple App store), even if the hardcore Star Wars fans stay away, and will no doubt fill Rovio and Disney’s coffers by offering plenty of new merchandising opportunities.
I have no real problem with that, because Rovio has probably shown more respect for the Star Wars franchise in this silly little mobile game than Lucas himself has in the past 20 years, it is funny, cheerful and fun.
Star Wars video games have been something of a disgrace and a running joke in the industry for most of the past ten years. It is a sad fact that this is probably the best Star Wars game since 2003’s Knights of the Old Republic on XBOX. Angry Birds Space still remains the superior game in the series for me though.
4/5 stars
Android – SD version is free (with ad pop ups), £1.99 for the HD version.
Apple – iPhone (0.69p), iPad (£1.99)
Windows Phone – 0.79p
Angry Birds Star Wars was reviewed on an iPad 3 running iOS 6.0.1
@allanswann