Angry Birds Go! review: mo’ money mo’ problems

The birds have set aside their grudge with the pigs for a friendly kart race in Rovio’s Angry Birds Go!, and I couldn’t be happier to see them getting along.

Angry Birds Go! pitches the birds versus the pigs in Mario Kart-styled races. Each character has their own unique ability borrowed from the original series. Red can launch himself in a high speed dash, Black can explode, and so on.

At the start of each race, players will find themselves perched in a familiar slingshot amongst a lineup of karts all waiting to be launched into an all-out onslaught of kart racing mayhem. What you soon find, though, is that Angry Birds Go! is a watered-down version of a kart racer that sacrifices staples like drifting and power-up boxes for simplicity. Sure you have your one unique ability, but unless you want to use in-game currency, you only get one shot with it. It sure would have been nice to see more action, and the lack of power-ups made the races kind of stale.

To combat this, Angry Birds Go! sets up 5 unique styles of racing for each course. These include a typical race, timed courses, versus mode, fruit splat, and the champion chase. All of these races are different enough, but they take place on the exact same course. Seeing how each course is only one short lap, these can get old quick.

Even with repetitive races, Angry Birds Go! is still somehow able to suck players into its world with stunning visuals that are sure to impress. The 3D modeling is done incredibly well, and helps make seeing the same course over and over again more bearable. The visuals in combination with great music makes the world or the Angry Birds feel more alive, which is pretty darn impressive for a free-to-play game.

Greedy birds?

Yes, Angry Birds Go! is a free game, so a few ads and in-app-purchases here and there are forgivable. However, Rovio went a bit too far with its monetization scheme this time around. For starters, one of the karts costs $50. That is an absurd price for an add-on. You can get an entirely different game for that kind of money, not just a better-performing kart. But seeing how you do not have to buy any of them, I can look past the ludicrous prices.

Look at the bird laughing as it charges you $50.

What I can’t look past is how Rovio limits your plays. To take part in any race, you will have to use up one of your 5 units of energy. With each race being only one lap, you can see how quickly your energy will be depleted leaving you with nothing to do but sit and wait. Every 20 minutes your bird will regain a unit of energy, but that is a significant amount of downtime between races.

Now each bird has its own energy counter, so the more birds you unlock the more you can play. This gives a decent incentive to keep playing, but really hurts the experience for those who are just beginning. So what do you do if you are out of energy but want to play more than 5 races? You use the in-game currency to buy more energy, of course!

For a game that has an enormous fan base, is already invading your game with ads, and has some decent in-app-purchases, the limited gameplay just came off as a cheap ploy for more money, and honestly hurt the game a lot.

My angry verdict