Angry Birds Star Wars

I love physics-based games, Angry Birds, and Star Wars. So, when these three things came together to make a pop-culture trifecta, I was thrilled. I had been waiting anxiously ever since they announced it in October (“What? I have to wait until *November*?!”).  When the morning of November 8^th came, I’d like to tell you that I sat with my finger hovering over the button in the app store.  But alas, I had nearly forgotten about it (I should have set a reminder), but one of my friends on Facebook was nice enough to post about it. I scrambled to my iPhone and downloaded it immediately.  It could have been 9.99 and I still probably would have bought it (with a split-second thought for justification), but $.99 later and I was in.  It runs wonderfully (I’m running iOS6.0.1 on an iPhone 4s), the music cues are well done, the different birds in their Star Wars-themed outfits.  They even finally made the Red Bird (Luke Skywalker) useful with an upgrade after a handful of levels! (Which has been a gripe of mine for a couple of years now). 

The puzzles and physics get tricky in later levels where you have to account for trajectory, descent, when to activate your special move, even the gravitational pull of the moons and planets (yes, it does make a difference.)  On multiple occasions in the last week and a half, I’ve run my phone down to the “20% battery remaining” warning while playing this game.   If it wasn’t Star Wars, I honestly wouldn’t have cared as much, but they’ve created a wonderful love letter to the franchise.  One of the new features is the use of Han’s trusty ship: “The Millenium Falcon”.  If you’re having trouble clearing a level, you often have the opportunity to replace your current bird with a homing beacon.  You fire this beacon into the level and tap it again to freeze it in place (or let it fall wherever it may) and it calls the Millenium Falcon to your aid: blaster cannons blazing.  After clearing levels and receiving stars, you gain additional Millenium Falcons at fairly regular intervals.  Just like the movie-Millenium Falcon, it comes in quite handy in a pinch.

Now, I’ve heard some complaints about in-app purchases.  At the end of the day, I think the cost is negligible, but it’s always personal preference.  I understand when a person pays $.99 for an app, the last thing they want to do is pay twice that for another set of levels.  I had no issues paying $1.99 for the “Path of the Jedi” levels (which parallels Luke’s training with Yoda on Dagobah).  The standard storyline (“A New Hope”, “Empire Strikes Back”, and “Return of the Jedi”) look to be free updates coming soon (I guess they can’t program them fast enough) and while  I await those, “Path of the Jedi” was a great in-betweener.  The other purchases you can make are additional Millenium Falcons (20 for $1.99, 50 for $4.99, 100 for $9.99 – with 10 free, and 200 for $19.99 – with 25 free).  I haven’t bought these because if you use your Millenium Falcons sparingly and garner enough stars, you won’t have to worry about having enough ships.

Now, I’m not a competitive gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I was really impressed with the replayability of these levels. In fact, once I had cleared the “Path of the Jedi” levels, I found myself going back through the levels covering “A New Hope” and trying to get 3 stars on all of them.

So, bottom line: if you’re even remotely a fan of Star Wars, Angry Birds, or physics-based games, I highly recommend picking this up and the additional levels  are well worth the low price for countless hours of entertainment.

Sidenote: I did install it on my 1^st generation iPad running iOS 5.1.1 and it crashes pretty regularly.  Hopefully, they fix that with an update but I don’t know how likely that is. 

~.~.~.~.~

Editor's Note: This was a free download on my Droid Bionic and cost $2.99 to download for my iPad. 

Ross Demma is a writer & artist out of Tucson, Arizona. You can find more information about him and his work at his Facebook page or his website.

Tunnel Tail

• Tunnel Tail is a new free mobile gaming app available on the App Store and Google Play™.
• The action-packed Tunnel Tail app is completely free – all characters, all levels.
• Tunnel Tail takes the player underground where mouse tribes struggle with the dark forces of the Lumini who seek to destroy both the mouse and human worlds. The player is the last hope the mice have to finally win their freedom.
• Tunnel Tail is the latest release from the developers at Schell Games.
• You can find more information about Tunnel Tail, along with fun activities, at tunneltail.com or by visiting Tunnel Tail on Facebook or YouTube. 

I first learned about this game when I was Austin attending Wizard World Austin. It's hard to resist stopping at a booth where they have a large television playing their game trailer. On top of that, they had tables stacked high with t-shirts. I stopped and had a great time talking with the gentleman at the table, who was both passionate and excited about this game. I couldn't resist. I downloaded it then and there (and walked away with a shirt for doing so) and promised to review it the first opportunity that we had.

Now, since this game is totally kid friendly (if you're ok with your child playing fighting games), I also downloaded it to the iPad and let my 11 year old check it out.  His take on the game:

"It's good. 5 stars. 9.5/10. It's an action role playing game with a cool setup that's pretty easy to learn." Yep, he was clearly feeling extra cooperative at the time of this review. From a parent's perspective..any game that can hold an 11 year old's attention for a good chunk of his allotted game time must be a good game.

From an adult's perspective...I can't disagree with anything he said. I don't generally love playing games on my phone, but even this one is simple enough that I have no problem. The graphics are fun and the game play is simple but not so simple that you get easily bored.  If I have one complaint it's that we can't have multiple profiles. This means that his account is set on the iPad and mine is set on the phone. I would much prefer that we could play this on a variety of devices with the same account or at least have the option of having multiple profiles on the same device. I do appreciate though that there is a semi-multiplayer function that allows you to "borrow" mice from a friend's burrow which is pretty handy.

Overall, if you like cute and fun games that involve saving the world and involve battling against the powers of evil, download this game. It won't cost you anything to check it out and you just might like it.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this game in exchange for this review. However, you can get the game free too! All comments, thoughts and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.