Rovio is a very interesting company. They are known for essentially a single game: Angry Birds. And that game is fantastic. I am a huge Angry Birds fan owning ad-free versions of every Angry Birds game, a special T-Mobile version of original birds with Mighty Eagle for Android and having three stars on almost every single stage in every version. Additionally I own about a dozen different Angry Birds shirts and about 10 bird plush toys. I love birds. However, Rovio's last new game was a departure from Birds called Amazing Alex. Frankly, it wasn't good. There was no characters and it was essentially just a "set up and drop" game with no real action. The result is that you had to make frustratingly small changes with a fairly lame control interface. It felt like Cut the Rope or Where's my Water without any of the cute characters.
So when I found out that Rovio was planning a new release about the pigs I was prepared to be dissappointed. I loved the birds, not the pigs. However, I gave Rovio a second chance and downloaded Bad Piggies last Thursday. I didn't play it until the afternoon and had a busy night but found myself more absorbed in it when I had the chance. Circumstances on Friday gave me plenty of time to play with the pigs and play I did. Bad Piggies is fantastic and shows that Rovio does have the potential to not only make fantastic games, but make fantastic games that follow a completely different formula than birds.
For those that haven't played it, what's wrong with you!? The game follows the pigs trying to make up for their stupid mistakes by building vehicles to move from the starting point to the "goal line" (for one star) while fulfilling special conditions like a time limit, not using specific parts, gathering star boxes or not smashing the vehicle to earn the remaining stars. Some stages even ask you to escort the massive King Pig in your vehicle which adds a lot of challenge. The first set of stages focuses on ground movement using engines to power fans or wheels or even using shook pop bottles as rockets. My favorite stages were the ones where you were given an engine with drive wheels and asked to navigate a stage. I quickly learned that just building a frame with a massive engine and throwing the wheel on the back resulted in an upside-down vehicle or a cracked frame. Some stages relied on momentum conservation while others relied on careful control of brute power. The best part is that proper vehicle construction is only half of the game, actually piloting that vehicle is just as important which makes Bad Piggies effectively an action game.
Just as I was completely geeking out about building vehicles and driving them, I got into the second set of stages which adds flight. I came. While they ease you into flight by using balloons and fans which makes for some slower action with careful anticipation the helicopter blades come next. What was a slow and careful manuvering of a balloon lifted vehicle turns into a frantic mashing of the power controls to keep your vehicle from crashing into ceilings and walls. Eventually I got used to controlling the fast moving vehicles, but the first few flights resulted in some hilarious results.
Where Rovio has always shined is in their sounds and characters. The sounds of destruction and the reactions of the pig pilot make me laugh even while I am failing. Miss your jump and start flying toward a wall? Watch the pig get worried and make a gasp of tense anticipation. Fly off a sweet jump? Listen to the pig shout with a mighty "Yee haw!" Mr. Pig is a very conservative driver as he gets a very worried look on his face when you get a little speed in the tires. Smash your vehicle and watch as Batman-like "crash" and "bang" pop out on screen with hilariously cartoon like sounds. However, nothing is more satisfying than completing the stage even as your carefully developed vehicle smashes into pieces. Basically the area where Amazing Alex completely failed is the area that Bad Piggies hits completely out of the ballpark. I've played every stage and I am already begging for more.
I do have some gripes about Bad Piggies however. One is the "Sandbox" stages. Seperate from the main stages are stages that the game calls "The Sandbox". The Sandbox contains four stages that are very large and contain 20 star boxes that have to be collected. At first these stages are basically impossible but as you complete other stages, you add parts to the Sandbox until you have enough to build a very complex vehicle. Once you have those complex parts like the large engine and large propeller the Sandbox stage becomes very easy. In the end I found myself running around in a craft not unlike a Chinook helicopter just collecting all of the boxes. It was EASY. But then I built a plane with a huge amount of rockets on it and WHEE! However the Sandbox shows that with enough parts any challenge is not a challenge anymore and leaves me wishing there was a real "sandbox" stage with relatively simple terrain that I could use to do crazy stuff. The only other gripe I have is that Piggies is very processor intensive and therefore eats battery. I can only play it for about an hour before my phone is back on the charger and most other games, even the notoriously battery hungry Kairosoft games, last 2-3 times longer.
So Bad Piggies was the game that Rovio really needed to do. It proved that they can do more than just Angry Birds updates. As of this morning, Android Market is showing 500,000+ downloads on Bad Piggies which is in 5 days half of all the downloads Amazing Alex has in 3 months. Kudos Rovio, I believe in you again.
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