Rovio’s Bad Piggies is out now for iPhone, iPad and Android. The title gives gamers a chance to see the antagonistic pigs from the company’s runaway success Angry Birds in a new, more positive light. After playing a big chunk of the game, it’s now clear that Bad Piggies has also given Rovio a chance to grow its game designs beyond simple bird flinging.
Bad Piggies is still at its core a physics puzzler, like Angry Birds or Cut the Rope. But it builds significantly on this formula with a modular vehicle-building premise. At the beginning of each stage players are given a handful of vehicle parts to drop into a grid. When players drop a part into the grid it automatically snaps into place, attaching itself to your vehicle-in-progress. These constructions have to safely get your pig through the stage to the finish line. It’s essentially a 2D version of Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.
At first things start off very basic with simple buggies that have to do nothing but safely roll downhill. But Rovio escalates the puzzling gameplay quickly. Within just a few levels I was constructing fan-powered vehicles and basic rockets that can take flight thanks to Coke-bottle boosters. One tricky level even required me to strategically blow up part of my own vehicle halfway through the stage by triggering an on-board TNT crate.
Although Bad Piggies gives plenty of hints to stumped gamers, the title is free-form puzzle gameplay at its best. Each stage shows you its layout, gives you a pile of tools to work with then sends you on your way. Players need to experiment and find out for themselves how many rocket boosters they’ll need to take flight, or how fast a fan on the back of their vehicle will send them over a big drop. Players learn by doing, quickly discovering a couple "basic" vehicle frames they can use over and over with minor modifications.
Bad Piggies also features plenty of secrets, extras and replay value to keep gamers coming back from more. The game retains the same three-star structure found in nearly every iOS puzzler, but even this system has been reworked to up the value. Players earn one star for safely getting their pig to the goal, but each stage has its own custom requirements for earning the other two stars. You might need to reach the goal within a tight time limit, or reach the goal without using a specific part in your vehicle, or pick up a star crate in an out-of-the-way corner of the stage.
Players don’t need to (and sometimes can’t) collect all the stars in a single run. So some of the trickier stages are really a collection of three individual challenges. I got in the habit of building one vehicle for speed, one to reach that tricky mid-air star crate, and one that met the third star’s requirement.
Discovering secrets like the silver skulls hidden in some levels also unlocks Bad Piggies’ ultra-tough sandbox stages. These give gamers a huge collection of vehicle parts (with more unlocked as you play), then plop you into the middle of a wide-open stage with 20 star crates littered high and low. I could only figure out how to collect two of the 20 in my first run at the starter sandbox map.
IGN will have a full review of Bad Piggies very soon, but my initial impression is very positive. The vehicle building is simple and intuitive, but the puzzles themselves are tricky and escalate in difficulty at a perfect pace. The game’s huge variety of extras and secrets make it a great value for $0.99 - $2.99 and generous post-release content is all-but guaranteed, given Rovio’s track record.
Justin is Editor of IGN Wireless. He has been reviewing mobile games since the dark days of Java flip phones. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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