Angry Birds 2 Review (Nokia N1): Ruffled My Feathers a Bit, But Didn’t Lay a Golden Egg (Video)

Angry Birds 2 debuted this summer with great fanfare, but it’s not exactly the hit that everyone expected. It’s available for free, brings a ton of levels (and I do mean a ton), but it also spoils the fun with limited lives (5 of them) and cards with birds used in limited amounts.

We played the game on the Nokia N1 and had over 200 levels to mess with. The 5 lives run out very fast, because levels are now multi segmented, into 2, 3 or 4 parts. You get your birds as playing cards and it’s very easy to run, especially since pigs can suddenly become airborne and parachute themselves hit into the air. You need gems to buy your extra lives or spells.

Those spells include a rain of toy ducks, a jalapeno that makes pigs burst into flames or a special power that makes a big swell to huge sizes. Boss fights are also included and now bosses have hit points, that start not to matter when the pig is pushed into a pit. There’s also a new bird, called Silver, that basically does what the boomerang bird did, but this one flies in an L shaped pattern.

Each bird has a special power, like Terrance who can tear any structure down by being so massive, or Bomb that simply blows, or the white bird and its exploding egg. The graphics are cartoonish, more complex, 3D and you can see bird and pig grimaces once you start throwing the birds. I find it very annoying that pigs use those parachutes to fly and make me waste an extra bird.

In some levels it’s impossible to finish with the number of birds given to you at the start, you just can’t! That’s why you’re tempted by IAPs and go for the golden pig on the screen or the extra damage bonus, that’s another bird. At the end of the level, if you’re left without birds, you can get one more after watching an ad, but even that is not enough sometimes.

I’m going to go ahead and give this game an 8.2 out of 10, since I feel that Rovio could have done much better here. I’m also not very impressed by the teleporting through pipes mechanics, the fans and other air mechanics, since they don’t have anything on the cool Angry Birds Space game features. You can get the game here.