Chillingo’s sister publishing house is finally hitting its stride no thanks less to this game and a couple of others. Let’s find out why!

Angry Birds ($0.99 – On Sale)

We’ve been on a little tour de force of iPhone puzzle games, and this Clickgamer offering furthers the genre even more. Angry Birds captured our hearts with its cute graphics and quirky sound effects that it becomes so difficult to pass this game up. Just be warned, putting it down is even harder to resist!

Presentation

Sorry to the men, but I gotta admit, the graphics in Angry Birds are really cute. There are a couple different birds, from a normal bird, a bird I like to call the bomb bird (use your imagination) and many more. There are 3 types of environments, each different graphics, with different obstacles and enemies.

The enemies change, sometimes wearing helmets which make it harder to kill them. I’m really liking the graphics, they’re somewhere between simple and detailed. I don’t know how they could be better.

Controls

You launch the birds using a slingshot, so the controls are somewhat obvious. Tap on the bird currently loaded and pull back and move the angle. The more you pull back the slingshot the faster / harder the bird will be thrown.

Some birds have special abilities. You can enable these by tapping the center of the screen after launching them. Some of the abilities are exploding, exploding into 3 birds, speeding up, etc.

Gameplay

The story of the game goes that the birds are in danger by the evil green pigs, and the pigs are stealing their eggs (I guess that’s why they’re mad….). Your job is to use the angry birds abilities to bring revenge and destroy the evil green pigs. There are 3 worlds currently, each with about 20 levels.

The gameplay gets harder, starting off with simple birds with no abilities and wooden obstacles, to much harder concrete and glass obstacles and a variety of different birds with different skills. Of course, there’s also the TNT boxes later on in the game that help out.

Suggestions

OpenFeint. Before you even start with me, I know what you all say about OpenFeint. But try 2.4, it completely changed my opinion about it. This game SCREAMS for OpenFeint achievements and leaderboards.

How about a fixed setting where the levels start zoomed out instead of me having to pinch out ALL THE TIME? Other than that, I’d actually suggest adding DLC packs, maybe with new obstacles? I’m really enjoying the game, I’d love more levels.

Conclusion

I’m really enjoying the game, it’s very polished and has great graphics, and to be honest, I haven’t seen a game like this on the AppStore (though I’ve seen quite a few on the computer for Flash but umm… well you know that’s iPhone’s flaw).

The game’s killer charm is really the careful mixture of animations as the birds explode and the sounds they make when they hit/miss the blocks. Now excuse me as I go finish up the last 5 or so levels, they’re freaking hard.