One of my major concerns was how the birds would actually drive the cars, I mean serious now of the birds have feet and it would have been way to easy to make them drive go karts, Mario Kart style. Rovio have created a downhill racer where the only force is gravity and you simply steer the car. Genius. It adds so much charm to the game and shows that simplicity was at the key focus of the games development.
The game plays with either a tilt or touch function, having played with the tilt function on my phone it works great and controls very smoothly but after several races on my Ipad, I found the touch controls to be much more responsive. Whether thats just because of the big screen or that I dont have to tilt the phone to far over and back Im not sure however both work very well and follow into the games simplicity.
Upon first playing and realising that there was IAP's I was terrified that the game would be another Plants Vs Zombies 2, safe to say that it is not. You can buy in game karts that have far better stats than the ones given to you but with enough patience you can make your in game car just as good as the ones you can buy. After Angry Birds Star Wars was very heavy on buying powerups, Rovio has made them more integrated into the UI rather than simply blasting them in the players face.
Whether it was just me, I found this game incredibly difficult. The five types of level for each track each force you do something different. The race levels and great and generate great competitive buzz later on and the fruit levels encourage you to explore the tracks to find the most fruit to crush. These two I most enjoyed. Theres then time trails which are really annoying because the controls are very precise, versus which has you face a random character from the game which inclusion is odd considering that the races give the player much more money as a prize and the bosses which are fustratingly difficult unless your car is overleveled. This leads me on to one of my biggest gripes, you will be doing lots of grinding to make your car win these races. You cannot get first without overleveling. The time trails are nearly impossible without a overleveled car and it spoils the difference between the modes since I always return to the race or fruit smash to earn coins. Also why isnt there local multiplayer? I would have loved to have played this with a friend each earning coins for racing, missed oppurtunity!!
The game's free due to it having a limit on the time you can play. Each bird has five races before they need to cool down. The cool down I think is 2hours per bird (they do stack though) However eventually there are twelve characters so slowly you'll be playing for longer which is a fantastic decision on Rovio's part since the more you play the more you'll want to improve you kart. The characters are also full or charm. From the Blue's consitent taunting to Terrance's blank expressions Rovio did a great bit of fan service to the Angry Bird shorts series by making all these characters playable.
The game is great, its one of the best Angry Bird titles and one of the best mobile games out there. I still think as an Angry Bird's game Space is my favourite but the more I play this the more I prefer this one. Sure the diffculty is rather sharp and the tracks arn't that diverse but the game reeks of charm and is really fun to play. For a free game its completely worth the download and as a new direction for the franchise I'm excited to see it develop.
Angry Bird's GO!! scores 8/10
+ Great graphics
+ Fun game play
+ Lots of characters
+ A great change for the series
- Harsh difficulty spike and grinding
- Lack of Modes & multiplayer
