While this years’ release of the iPhone 7 is expected to restore lost faith in the Apple brand for both investors and spread betting players, who have watched Apple stocks tumble amid the failure of the iPhone 6S launch and Apple Watch, the App store has fortunately gone largely unimpacted, releasing a stream of new content over the Easter break. One however, comically caught our eye.
We all remember the Angry Birds addiction that most of us faced back in the day, and while we have seen many rip-offs and re-jigs, this is the official sequel to the original trend-setter by Rovio. However, it seems that not everybody has been so enthused with the new release, with many primarily clamouring about constant crashes and, more importantly, even more about the game falling into the ‘pay-to-play’ trap as it restricts users’ playing time unless they ‘earn’ or buy more gems.
But let’s get back to the game at hand since over 10 million people have downloaded it and likely millions more to come with the Angry Birds film also hitting the screens in the next month.
The game itself seems to have overhauled its’ graphic but spending an unruly amount of time waiting for the game to initially load up and login was not a great first experience. My iPhone 6 Plus felt jittery which was difficult to swallow but fortunately you can skip a lot of the fancy extras and just get down to playing the levels which sped things up again.
The intra-level loading cogs and load time for the treasure chests yet again makes you frustrated at just why a top-level phone cannot handle the App, so it was up to the gaming experience itself to sell me as to just why I should carry on with it instead of just tossing it aside for the original experience or something else. While it certainly seemed every bit as entertaining as the original, there was a kind of lightly over-hauled feel to it with the ability to level up your birds and the treasure chests giving you that little extra incentive to keep playing to unlock new thing. There is also a Weekly tournament that allows you to move up leagues and, I’m assuming, win prizes for doing so, although I wasn’t really sold on this as I just found it an annoying extra for the most part.
So all in all, Angry Birds 2 looks like it’s on course to pick up a large following again but there is clearly some issues to sort out first. Updates will be crucial to its’ ongoing survival and the ability to earn gems without paying will undoubtedly spell life or death for the App as it doesn’t yet feel strong enough to take the paying market by storm and there are unfortunately too many alternatives out there.
