Look, I’m not here to tell anyone that Angry Birds Rio is a great game, but sometimes it’s the greatest game for killing time or farting away on while you watch Giant Bomb be goofballs during your lunch-break. Truly, that’s the only time I’ve played it, generally in spurts of 15 to 20 minutes, which is just long enough for me not to get tired–or frustrated–at the mechanic of tossing birds and stuff and watching everything, hopefully, fall apart. If you’ll recall, I ended up playing a small slice of Angry Birds in 2012 via Google+, but this hot bird-tossing action is now on my Windows 8 phone.
Obviously, Angry Birds Rio is Angry Birds, but this time based around the 2011 Blue Sky Studios computer-animated film. The movie, for those that have not yet seen it like myself, goes like so: a domesticated macaw from small-town Minnesota called Blu meets the fiercely independent Jewel and takes off on an adventure to Rio de Janeiro with the bird of his dreams. Or maybe it’s based on Rio 2, and I’m not going to even bother looking up the plotline for that one. Let’s just assume it is more bombastic bird business.
Well, there’s the movie plotline. Here’s the game’s: Kidnapped, caged, and whisked away by animal smugglers, the Angry Birds escape the clutches of their bungling captors, only to discover a deeper purpose. Rare and endangered birds are being held captive in Rio de Janeiro, and it’s up to the Angry Birds to rescue their feathery friends by busting open their cages and setting them free. Hmm. Pretty much the same thing. Also, I love in a stupid way how they are simply and collectively known as the Angry Birds, as opposed to the Heroic Birds or Friendly Birds. Well, I guess in that first game they were murdering a bunch of pigs…
Anyways, you throw birds at stuff via a slingshot, and sometimes you tap on the screen to create a second effect, depending on the bird type tossed. That formula has remained the same it seems since the very beginning, so what does Angry Birds Rio bring to the table? Um, these things, which I copy/pasted this from the store description, hence the excited writing and hype:
- 6 fantastic episodes with 180 exciting levels, plus 12 bonus levels
- Completely new achievements
- Special hidden fruit trophies to discover
- Spectacular boss fights–the ultimate test of your Angry Birds skills
- Expect plenty more to come: Episodic updates continue throughout 2011
Well, I guess I’m like three years behind on this game, and it probably already has all the episodic updates in it already given just how many levels there are, as well as bonus stuff right from the get-go. Oh, and I just noticed that there’s button on the main home screen that does take you to a separate section of levels specifically for Rio 2. Ahh. So all bird bases got covered.
Right. So, those boss battles. From what I’ve encountered, which I think is just two boss fights so far, it’s all about luck. Whereas you might need a balance of luck and skill in several levels to get by, I was only able to defeat the bosses by blindly tossing birds and hoping for the best. It took many tries. There’s actually a solid learning curve for each world, which means getting three stars is quite challenging, often asking you to free all the birds–or kill all them monkeys–in one or two turns instead of five or six. I’ve hit a roadblock several times, forcing me to constantly try new ways of throwing birds; each level is beatable, for sure, you just need to experiment.
I have two worlds of levels left to beat in the Rio section: Smugglers’ Plane and Market Mayhem. And then maybe those Rio 2 levels, plus a bunch of bonus stuff to try. Spoiler: it probably all involves throwing birds at things. I suspect this will be another week or two of time-killing, and that’s fine. If I really need to keep scratching this itch, I’ll just remind myself that I also have the original Angry Birds on my phone too–it was given out for free one day as a special thing–so I can keep tossing birds and watching others play more fun games than me. Again, Angry Birds Rio is not the greatest game out there, but it’s also not the worst and serves a purpose in my life, at least for now.
Grinding Down 