Maybe you heard about this little game called Angry Birds Space that came out today. I certainly couldn't avoid seeing it all over the place so now I'm writing about it.
At first I was ignoring the new Angry Birds game because I already have the original Angry Birds. I didn't see the point in buying a new version when I have so much content left in the old version. Finally after seeing the 20th headline hyping how awesome Angry Birds Space is I decided to just buy it. It's only $2.99 (for the HD iPad version). I'm glad I did.
The introduction of gravity and inertia add very fun twists onto the Angry Birds formula. Now you have to figure in how your bird will react when it passes into gravity and begins orbital decay. Some levels require you to launch your birds into a gravity field on one side of an object relying on the birds orbit to hit the pigs on the other side of the object. The game is very satisfying when you finally launch a bird and take out all the pigs with a perfectly calculated trajectory and orbit.
Inertia also plays a role. Some levels do not have objects with gravity. Launching a bird on these levels just causes the bird to travel in a straight line unless the bird itself can alter course. Objects and pigs also obey the same rules so it becomes a matter of causing an environmental object scatter effect to kill as many pigs as possible. The pigs are encased in protective bubbles which pop if hit hard enough. The pig then flash freezes and drifts for a bit before dying. It's pretty satisfying although a gruesome explosion would be nice too.
So yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by Angry Birds Space. It's still enough like the original to feel familiar but changed enough to warrant purchase even if you already have the other versions.
I played through the first 30 levels of the HD iPad version before writing this. I earned 3 stars on over half the levels and found one of the bonus "golden eggstroids" in my time.