Angry Birds turned two on Sunday, and to celebrate developer Rovio has brought out a free upgrade for the iOS version, including 15 new levels.
Furthermore, all stages of the original Angry Birds game have been unlocked whether you completed them or not, thus completely removing the utterly miniscule sense of reward that existed in the game. Toys ‘R’ Us is getting in on the shameless cash cow action celebrations with discounts on Angry Birds plush toys, if you feel you should own such an item.
The success of Rovio’s game has seen the tiny company’s value soar to more than $1 billion. Some other stats, plucked from Rovio’s smug press release: as of last month, fans played 266 billion levels of the game. They shot 400 billion birds. They collected 44 billion stars. People play Angry Birds for a combined 1.825 billion hours per month.
You’ll have to excuse me if I sound bitter. It’s because (rant time now) I regard Angry Birds as possibly the most worthless, undeserving success story in the history of videogames. These are not the words of a gaming snob (I’ll happily play – and genuinely enjoy – other casual classics like Flight Control and Fruit Ninja ). These are the words of a rational person.
Put bluntly, Angry Birds is rubbish. Success is based almost entirely on luck (due to the complete lack of calibration on your bird catapult, you have to guess how you aimed each last shot, making it a never-ending trial-and-error hell ), stars are awarded completely arbitrarily, and the whole game is an excessively fiddly mess that produces absolutely no sense of pride upon completion.
Happy 2nd birthday, you miserable, repetitive, money-printing mess.
