Fed up of passively sitting by while kamikaze poultry flings forward a ferocious attack, the Pigs are getting their own back!
Rovio beat almost every record in the App Store ecosystem with their first game Angry Birds.
Rovio have stepped up to the platform again with their Android app Bad Piggies, available for smartphones and tablets since September 27 this year. It’s free for download at Google Play Store but is it any good?
Graphics
Bad Piggies continues in the same vein as Angry Birds, bringing lovable characters to life in a format familiar to all. It’s a little too familiar, though – things haven’t really developed much since the first franchise. A bit disappointing. Despite running Angry Birds through seasonal facade-changes – and even to into space – little of this previous artistic creativity has made its way to Bad Piggies. Backdrops are pretty unimaginative and the terrain looks kind of multi-purpose. “But there’s so much of it!” Rovio might cry. Well, that certainly didn’t hold UbiArt back when crafting retro Rayman Jungle Run.
Bad Piggies recaptures the familiar comedy of the original – a little too well.
Having said all this, the character’s themselves, their crazy vehicles, and the animation is rendered with eye-watering hilarity. In the words of Yahoo: “If you can’t enjoy watching a pig drive a badly constructed car off a cliff and onto a pile of dynamite, you probably don’t have a soul.” 6/10 here – a little more tender lovin’ care on the old backdrops and that score could have been much higher.
Gameplay
It’s fun. Really, really fun. The kind of addictive fun that has you stealing a horrified glance at your watch before furtively returning to plowing cartoon pigs into explosives via calamitous vehicles that look like they’re designed by an ill-informed three-year old.
Bad Piggies threatens to steal your life – or at least your calls of nature.
And what’s more, it lasts. There are 72 levels – and 18 additional ones -, promising unending hours of enjoyment. Since Rovio mastered the art of crafting of difficulty curves in Angry Birds, this game challenges from the word go without becoming repetitive. It’s a lot more fun on a tablet than on a smartphone, though, as the bigger screen makes for easier play. 9/10
Replay value
If you manage to get to the end of Bad Piggies before Rovio release another round of updates, you have my undying respect. Bad Piggies is being promoted as huge and will only – if it’s anything like Angry Birds (yes!) – swell to greater proportions. While a probably franchise is not strictly ‘replay value’, we will probably all still come back for more.
Bad Piggies is the side-scroller that, we trust, will never end.
And true replay value can be inspired by the smug sense of superiority you’ll feel when watching novice friends struggle through earlier levels. Pushing a pig into a barrel of TNT is always good for a laugh too. 10/10 though we’re banking on Rovio’s continued delivery of varied and engaging awesomeness.
Conclusions
Rovio have done a great thing here. They’ve taken the most popular mobile game ever and turned it on its head – without making it seem like a cash-in. While it’s a shame there wasn’t more attention to the little details – in particular, original artwork – the gameplay speaks for itself. And, it’s virtually an everlasting experience! At only a reasonable 34MB and no cost to you whatsoever, this is something that every single Android owner should have on their device. Especially if you need to work through some traumatic early farmyard experiences!
Top dollar, Rovio – for free. Wow!
