I’d held out for quite a while against the Angry Birds world domination. My wife succumbed last Christmas when I got her an iPad. For whatever reason, Angry Birds Rio was one of the few games she downloaded. Of course My Little Guy (™) took to it like a fish, even though he wasn’t all that proficient. He’s got fine motor skill issues, but he’s young and highly enthusiastic.
So now I’m trying to turn my dormant iPod Touch into My Little Guy’s (™) iOS device. That was the disease vector leading to my infection. I just had to try the game out.
And my old game obsession tendencies from way back in the undergrad days came back to life. I basically started playing Angry Birds Rio late last Wednesday, Dec 28th. I was done with all the levels by Sunday afternoon, January 1st. I struggled with a few screens, had to go to to the Interwebs to cheat on one (it was 3AM and I crumbled in a moment of weakness), and surfaced a gaming intensity I hadn’t seen in a long time.
Angry Birds Rio is addictive in that it’s a series of rich micro-challenges. Just complex enough to put the braincells to work, but completion is always tantalizingly close. “Just one more stage,” becomes the zombielike mantra. With a healthy dose of, “I’ll finish it in one shot!” Plus the overall game design, mechanics, and user experience are brilliant from a cognitive perspective. While subtly addictive, the game is really fun to play.
I will be staying very far away from the original Angry Birds.