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According to Wikipedia, Angry Birds is among the highest-grossing media franchises of alltime. With 9.19 billion dollars in sales, it ranks just slightly below the Dragon Ball franchise and Grand Theft Auto Series. That is absolutely nuts compared to the cultural impact of those two franchises. With that money, It’s no wonder why the team at Resolution Games put the franchise into VR with Angry Birds: Isle of Pigs. With stylish visuals reminiscent of the Angry Birds Movie and a low price of twenty dollars this puppy sored to the top of the sales chart. The question remains: how well does the franchise carry into the Virtual Reality world, and does it have enough movement so someone like me will lose weight? Well there is only one way to find out, baby. My name is Jack Jenkins. Welcome to my YouTube channel. Today, I will be reviewing Angry Birds: Isle of Pigs to see if you should buy it as well and see how many calories I burned. The footage was played and recorded on a Meta Quest 3 if you are wondering.
[Intro]
Angry Birds: Island of Pigs is the first VR game I’ve ever owned. I Got this with my thirty dollar referral code when I purchased my Meta Quest 3. I am stating this because the whole VR technology is brand new to me. Thus, my rating may be a bit higher than other reviews due to the novelty of Virtual Reality. Regardless, Angry Birds: Island of Pigs is one of the top ten best games I’ve played this year. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, you must use these birds and a slingshot to take out some pigs. To beat the level, you must destroy as many of them as possible through direct hits or by having the environment destroy them. The more destruction you cause with the least amount of shots being taken the thigher the score you will get.
Originally, the Angry Birds series was a simple 2D iPhone game you played while waiting around. I was worried the game wouldn’t have carried over, but it did so beautifully. The game starts off with fifty-two levels over four different worlds. After beating that, you get fifty-two additional levels in the same worlds, this time with a spooky theme. The levels start off on the base of an island, then move to the clifs, up the ski slope and lasty to the pigs disco themed hide out. Along the way you can see this air balloon come in close and closer until you are next to it. Once you beat the game the air balloon gets destroyed and then you repeat the same path in the Spooky version.
With a hundred and four levels by the developer it’s enough content to last a few hours but it pales when compared to the over five hundred levels in the original game alone. I would have preferred a bit more levels with more variety in the settings. So far it’s two tropical-themed levels, a snow level, and an eighties disco theme. Would love a bit more variety even considering the other games in the series. Give me a volcano level or a desert theme. It would be awesome if the developers took inspiration from the phone franchise and gave me Angry Birds Star Wars in VR! Get to shoot the birds at the deathstar. Hey, a man can dream…
The gameplay in these levels is very simple. You get three birds for each level and must slingshot the pigs to death. The strategy comes in on where in the level you should hit to do the most damage. Doing more damage with fewer birds builds up more points. These points correlate to a higher star rating. These don’t really unlock anything else, which is a shame. It would be cool if the stars correlate to unlockable skins or hidden levels. Additional strategy comes with the different birds’ abilities that can be triggered. Red is your standard bird, but Yellow comes in handy with the ability to speed up after shooting. That allows you to do more damage and cause more chaos. The bird Bomb can explode whenever you hit the trigger. This guy is my favorite for just destroying everything. Lastly, blues split into three different birds, causing a wide array of disrepair. The iPhone games have about twenty different types of birds, so there is room for a sequel to expand upon this concept. Though the content the developer provided is enough, original levels are a great simple time.
The spooky levels, however, do have a bit lacking in the fun. Angry Birds is about the delicate balance between strategy and raw destruction. I feel they leaned too much into the strategy portion. Amazingly, an update that doubled the game’s length came out, but I am a bit disappointed with the reuse of the same environments and the lack of chaos. Where all this fun can be found, however, is with the level builder. With this, you can build your angry birds’ levels or play someone else. With thousands of created levels, you really have a ton of fun on your hands. Some of these user-generated levels are better than the developers’ ones in the spooky mode. The creativity of some of these people just blows my mind. I tried building my own level, but it just blows up without the user doing anything. A career in architecture is something that will never cross my mind.
My overall impression of the game is that it can be an absolute blast to being just okay based on the levels. With the amazing level builder and fun main mode, this game was one of my favorites of the year. What the developers did here is truly magical. They absolutely nailed the fun of mobile games in the virtual reality environment. The game came out about four years ago, and I bet people are just itching for a sequel to come out any day now. For just twenty bucks, it’s a great package, but it’s even better for ten, which it regularly goes on sale for.
Before I go, the question remains… is this game a good workout. I would say no. Yes, you move around the levels to get the right tower angle to maximize your hit. However, there isn’t much movement beyond that besides the gripping of the slingshot to shoot the bird. I guess pointing around the level to teleport can burn calories but yeah not much movement on this. Regardless, I have all the data here to review.
I played the game for twelve days, beating the regular and spooky levels. I didn’t three-star all of them, but I got about halfway there. During my playtime, I burned one thousand six hundred and seventeen calories. That comes out to an average Calories per session of one-hundred and thirty-four point seven five. Total playtime over those twelve days is three hours and forty-seven minutes. Man, his is a short game. The average time per session is around nineteen minutes. That brings me to a calorie burn rate of seven points zero, one calorie per minute. For context, that is around the same burn rate as Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack, which is an RPG music game. Overall, I would not buy this game to burn calories. Buy the game because it is a blast… preferably on sale, so you can maximize that value per dollar ratio.
So, guys, that’s it for today’s Fitness Game review on Angry Birds. Now that I have a VR headset, please let me know of any other games or products you want me to review. Besides that, I will do pretty much any topic on self-improvement that doesn’t require me to get hurt. While you are in the comments, please give me a big thumbs up. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel. Follow me on X @truejackjenk. Lastly, have a fantastic day, everyone! All you guys watching are just so incredibly amazing!