Angry Birds Go Review: Slightly Underwhelming, But Still Colourful and Fun (Video)

I have to admit that next to Angry Birds Star Wars II, Angry Birds Go was the only game this year that had me counting the days till it was out. And boy was I disappointed to play it… Ignore the $100+ cars you can purchase here, ignore the repetitive races… it’s the energy bars that kill me.

This is a karting game that sticks to the legacy of Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing and allows you to take the famous Angry Birds and pigs for a spin in a car. The cars are hand made from sticks, stones, frying pans and everything one can use in a hurry to make a kart. The title was launched on December 11th and it’s free, or better said freemium.

It supports telepods, meaning you can use toys in tandem with the game to unlock new characters. The graphics look nice on the LG G Pad 8.3 I used for the test and everything is colourful, shiny and joyful. The physics in the game are surprisingly good and so are the shadows and reflections. My only beef is that some angles of the tracks are very sharp and it’s easy to fail a tight turn and ram into a wall.

The game feels complex, but it tends to become repetitive, since you have to do every race 5 times over and the tracks don’t feel all that different. Each bird has an energy bar that allows you to race 5 times and then you have to wait a few hours… or pay with crystals. Progress is slow in the game and the races are divided into time trials, normal races against 5 players, a versus race with 3 levels of difficulty and a fruit splatting challenge.

Then there’s the boss battle, where you have to defeat a far superior opponent 3 times and then you can use him to race, be it pig or bird. You can use tilt or touch to steer and controls are pretty intuitive. Each bird or pig has a special power, that can speed up the kart, hit enemies with bombs and other such things.

Overall, this is a game that gets a 7.5 out of 10 and will probably be forgotten by the masses in 2 years. It desperately needs multiplayer to keep it entertaining… Here’s the download link.