After convincing us to fling furious fowls at pigs behind battlements, Rovio decides to let us know the Swine Side Story in Bad Piggies. And makes an intriguing if not quite a compelling case for playing it.
It has been almost three years since Rovio made throwing birds from catapults at pigs, a rage on handsets and tablets, leading to what many call the casual gaming phenomenon. The charm of Angry Birds was its utter simplicity - you just placed a bird in a catapult, pulled the string back, worked out angles of attack, and let fly. There was hardly any learning curve, the game was fun, thanks to some entertaining sounds and animations (many was the person who went ?aww? on seeing the birds cheer after a successful demolition). The game launched millions of downloads, spawned a few sequels, but after a while, came complaints of monotony, accompanied by the query: ?Why don?t the pigs do something??
?The story revolves around recovering an egg-capturing plan of the pigs that gets lost.
Well, they do now, thanks to Rovio?s new game dedicated entirely to them. Bad Piggies (Read our first impression here) is all about getting those pesky pigs you pelted in the Angry Birds? games from one place to another. Literally. The game?s storyline is expectedly thin - the pigs strike upon a plan to capture some eggs, and draw up elaborate plans to get them. But then promptly go ahead and lose the plan. Your job in the game is simple - help build devices and machines that will help the pigs fly, drive and generally end up in the proximity of the tatters of the plans that are scattered all over the place. How smoothly you do so and how many bonus items you pick up on the way will determine how many stars your performance gets.
?There is a design hint book that will help you get the parts in the right places
The is no shortage of levels ( with more promised) and the game has the same richly coloured and yet simple look of the Angry Birds franchise. But that is where all similarities with that particular game end. For, Bad Piggies is clearly a game targeted at a crowd that is looking for something more than just whiling away a few minutes. There are no catapults or even birds in sight and the stress here is on building things rather than destroying them, and this is by no means a cakewalk - you are given some components (wheels, propellors, balloons, boxes, et al) and build contraptions to transport the pigs by slotting them into the relevant category in a grid and then hitting the ?play? button to see where they take their passengers - to ye tattered scrolls or cases of TNT, or heck, if they move at all, although you get a design book to help you in the building process.
You build vehicles for the pigs by dragging and dropping components into a grid
As you go up the difficulty levels, you will have opportunities to control the speed of these ?pig transporters?, and will often find yourself operating in time constraints. Of course, the vehicles themselves will get more complex and the grid will grow bigger and have more slots, culminating in a sandbox level that will leave you feel right in a garage. The animations played smoothly on both our iPhone 4S and new iPad, even though they were not quite as much fun as Angry Birds - there simply were fewer giggles and cheers and the pigs expressions? were pretty much the same we had seen in the Angry Birds series - and their determination to stay cheerful irrespective of the consequences of their quest can grate after a while. Sound and music quality are super - the latter is a potential ringtone!
Just where your contraption ends up, with what and in what shape earns you stars
That said, we would be committing the sin of falsehood if we said that we did not have fun playing Bad Piggies. But, ?twould be an even greater falsehood to say that it is as compelling as Angry Birds was. It is in fact a very different game, and one that requires far more patience. It takes some getting used to, and will at times set your teeth on edge, especially as the levels get tougher. Yes, it is a fun enough game for those who like to use their little grey cells while playing games, but traditional Angry Birds? fans should be ready to either exercise patience or be ready to just a bit of disappointment. As a stand alone puzzler, we found it not to be quite in the same league as compared to Where?s My Water and Cut The Rope, which not only had ?cuter? protagonists but also were a whole lot easier to play even at higher difficulty levels.
Don't get fooled by the familiar looks - Bad Piggies is nothing like Angry Birds
Angry Piggies will top download charts because of its association with the Angry Birds? franchise. Ironically, it is that very franchise that burdens it. Download it if you want a very different, challenging experience. If you are a diehard Angry Birds fan and want something on similar lines, be ready to be a bit disappointed. This is a very different kettle of...er...pigs.
Available from: iTunes App Store - Price: $0.99, $ 2.99 (HD version)
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Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Gaming/Bad-Piggies-for-iOS-Review_10924.html
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Rob Moore
If you are a company who rakes in millions making social games for Facebook, I have good news for you. Researchers at N.C. State University have developed the means of more accurately detecting bot accounts without alerting their owners, so the game's developers can shut them down and kick those freeloading sons of bots out of the cityville.