Angry Birds Trilogy: An Opinion

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!! Oh wait, it’s just more Angry Birds falling from the sky. It seems that the popular mobile app has taken over the web, iTunes, the Android store, and it will soon spread to your console! Activision, in partner with the app developer Rovio, are releasing the Angry Birds Trilogy on the PS3, XBOX 360, and Nintendo 3DS on September 25 of this year.

So what’s in this trilogy? If it’s a new version, it must have the latest and greatest from the pig-smashing hit, right? Wrong! It’s just the classic Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio. For those who have already forgotten, Rio was a 20th Century Fox movie released in March 2011 about a (guess what) a bird who goes on an adventure through Rio de Janeiro with newly made friends. And don’t get me wrong, it was a cute movie! After it was released, Rovio decided to make a spin off of the movie for a new app, and Angry Birds Rio was born.

When I first heard of this Trilogy, I thought it was strange why Rio was included and Angry Birds Space wasn’t. After all, Rio is a movie well over a year old and Angry Birds Space is the latest version of the app, launched by NASA and incorporating real gravitational pulls in gameplay. And for an asking price of $39.99 on the console and $29.99 on the 3DS, the big question is “Is this really worth it?” Seeing how in the iTunes store, all three games and their DLC are just around $6 and is completely free on the Android market, I think we know the answer.

However, Activision promises that the console release was built from the ground up, adding 19 original levels and enhancing the visuals to a 1080p resolution. The title will be compatible with both the Kinect and PlayStation Move, giving players a choice between playing traditionally with a controller or with movement. For the 3DS, Angry Birds will now be both in 3D and support the StreetPass feature. Although this may be true and appealing, I don’t know how long I could stand in my living room moving my hands to play Angry Birds. I understand a 3DS version of the game that is still mobile, and I think most people still want it to stay that way.

Overall, Angry Birds is starting to spread itself thin. There are multiple versions of the game already: mobile app, Google Chrome, Facebook, Playstation Network, and now on the console. There is some potential for the game and I do hope there will be some exclusives and free DLC to make up for the steep price of $40. I would like to see some kind of online competitive mode or co-op so more people on the console can play together. And to add Angry Birds Space would make more sense… then again, it wouldn’t be a trilogy anymore. But it’d be a much better game!