MEGATech Showcase: Angry Birds Go! Review Round-Up

Tolerate them or hate them, Rovio’s Angry Birds are still flying high; figuratively speaking, anyway. In reality, they’ve now planted their avian cabooses into various vehicles in Angry Birds Go!, a free-to-play combat racer in the vein of Mario Kart. This is a sharp departure from the slingshot gameplay of old, but is Rovio making the right turn here?

Does Angry Birds Go! leave the competition in the dust or does it crash and burn?

Will I think of anymore awesome racing jokes? If I think of them!

Ready, set, Angry Birds Go!

Venture Beat

Despite some definite annoyances, Angry Birds Go! is an accessible kart racer that offers plenty to do without too many free-to-play shenanigans showing up. It’s not as varied or exciting as a Mario Kart title, but it’ll keep you busy and entertained — especially once you mute those sound effects.

Full Review

Jay is Games

Angry Birds Go! does make a nice entry in the Angry Birds franchise, and it pulls off the quick and simple formula of arcade racing quite well. It’s a little repetitive, though, and certainly won’t make Mario Kart feel obsolete any time soon. The in-app purchases are the biggest scar, especially the obnoxious credit timer that seems to be out of whack.

Full Review

Gamezebo

Angry Birds Go! is a game that looks great and plays well, but it’s hampered by design flaws; both in its monetization and its attempts to make kart-racing idiot-proof. The problem, though, is that kart-racing has always been idiot-proof. By stripping out so much of what works in kart racing games, Angry Birds Go! fails to capture the same heart and passion of its competitors.

 Full Review

The Verge

Free-to-play games aren’t universally evil — Plants vs. Zombies 2 showed that it’s possible to have a free game with in-app purchases that aren’t constantly begging you for cash. Angry Birds Go, meanwhile, feels like a step in the opposite direction. It’s a terrific, well-crafted experience perfectly suited to mobile devices, but its design is hampered by its free-to-play structure — it’s a great game that’s no fun to play.

Full Review

Truckin’ Along

So Angry Birds Go! neither smokes the competition nor crashes in glorious fashion. Unsurprisingly, Rovio has given us another fun casual experience. Even less of a surprise, the free-to-play framework contains to disappoint. As The Verge points out, “freemium” can work, with Plants vs. Zombies 2 being a good example of that. However, it often doesn’t work, usually due to developers failing to strike a good balance between free and pay content. The good news is that, being free-to-play, it costs nothing to download Angry Birds Go! and give it a whirl. The bad (and ludicrous) news is that some of the pay content reportedly costs up to a hundred bucks.