If Angry Birds wasn’t randomly ingenious enough, Rovio has taken it up a notch with an affiliation with Lucas Arts. Angry Birds Star Wars brings together the brilliant bird throwing puzzler fun of the original and crazily combines it with the storyline and characters from Star Wars to create a game that is even better.
While George Lucas has come under a lot of flack for his later work with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones stories, it’s pretty tough to fault many of the computer game adaptations or spin offs that have come out over the last thirty odd years. The original Star Wars games on the NES and SNES were classic shoot-em-ups, which were followed up with the might of Shadow of the Empire on the Nintendo 64. There was also the brilliance of the Jedi Knight series first person shooters, The Force Unleashed adventure titles and all of the amazing cuteness of the Lego Star Wars games.
While Angry Birds Star Wars is much less high octane than the majority of its predecessors, it’s still a great addition. Not only do all of the birds correlate to characters from the film series, they also have their moves built into their arsenal, so when you catapult Obi Wan Kinobi in feathered form in the direction of Storm Trooper style pigs you also get to use his force to send them lying into pulled pork oblivion. Luke Skywalker whips out his lightsaber to dish out his hot beaky justice, Han Solo fires blaster rays of death and Chewbacca is a hurtling ball of heavy winged fury.
It’s not just the characters that stay true to the film. The game also manages to follow the storyline of the Star Wars series pretty accurately (well, as accurately as a bird and pig based game can). Not only do you star out on the sandy plains of Tatooin, but you will also find yourself battling the malevolence of Darth Vader on the Death Star from the cockpit of an X-Wing fighter.
In addition to all of the fun and longevity that’s in built into the Angry Birds formula, there’s also the added benefit that it’s also just 69p to buy. It doesn’t get much better than this for game playing value. Factor in the R2D2 and C3PO bonus levels and Millenium Falcon special moves and you’ve got a must own iPhone game.
Angry Birds Star Wars review: 4.4/5
