Angry Birds Star Wars for iPhone/iPad Reviews — Metacritic

More of an expansion as opposed to an innovation. Rovio uses the Star Wars prequel trilogy tointroduce a slew of new bird abilities thanks to the seemingly endless amount of characters this era in George Lucas’ series has. The way it follows the story is scattershot and fragmented, but it gives us the goods when it comes to the characters and level design.

Given the amount of characters and crazy powers they each have, it’s not hard for your mind to race with thoughts of the potential of figuring out just what characters would be most effective in a given situation. The story obviously limits you to specific birds, but Rovio gives you a chance to put your own ideas to the test. You get the option to play through all of the levels using any birds you want. A cool idea, but there is a catch. These birds aren’t unlimited.

There’s a certain collect-a-thon element to the game. It offers you chances to get new birds every eight hours that you can use to bail you out of a regular level or, you guessed it, use to actually play this new series of levels. Given it’s nature, it’s sort of an obvious ploy to allow microtransactions in. Unless you’re just really good, there are times when you’ll be running low on birds. You can either wait eight hours for a few new ones, pray you get one of those rare occurrences where all you have to do is watch an add, or drop some cash. Given the nature of the mode, I don’t fully support it no matter how much it pushes gamer creativity to the forefront.

Luckily the game delivers on it’s standard story levels. It’s basically exactly what you would expect, but the large amount of bird abilities at your disposal allow you to play it in new ways. It’s always exciting to get a new character and figure out what they do. Especially when you realize that a lot of them have their own unique power, instead of just being another skin in a shared pool of abilities.

The best new addition though has got to be the ability to play on the Dark Side. I’m sorry, I mean «Pork Side.» That’s right, you get the ability to play as the pigs this time around (only dressed as classic Star Wars villains). You’re still doing the exact same thing, but the powers you are given are far more destructive. Not to mention it’s just cool to shoot pigs at the birds when you’ve been doing the opposite for so long.

Ultimately it doesn’t do much to shake things up. It just gives you some new ways to play. While that leads to a very familiar feeling, it’s not hard to appreciate the new toys it gives you. It goes along way to make the Angry Birds Star Wars game just a bit better. As a result this sequel is a slight improvement. Given that there’s a free-to-play option (just be prepared for adds) it’s worth a look for Star Wars and Angry Birds fans. Especially if you enjoyed the first. It’s largely the same game, just a bit bigger and better this time around.

7.5/10