Angry Birds must die!

Twooruuut-too! Or whatever’s the sound those weird little pissed off birds make when you launch them from a giant slingshot. Let’s face it: is there anyone with internet access that hasn’t heard of Angry Birds? Thought so; it is one of the most popular games for mobile phones, and for good reasons too! It’s fun, challenging and kinda addictive. But it has to stop! Let’s take a walk on memory lane:

A few years ago the world around me was split in three categories: those with iPhones, those with normal phones and a few here and there with Android. I was in the middle category at the time, and at one point while on the subway I saw that every other person was on their iPhone 3G(S) or the new 4 playing a weird game with what looked to me like colorful balls: you were supposed to throw the red and yellow ones into the green ones. Then I saw it was about round birds doing a suicidal kamikaze-like dive into green round pigs. Weird. But funny! Them I kept staring left and right and I learned the name and what it was about.
Fast forward a few months and I got an Android phone too! And by that time Angry Birds became available to the mortals using Android, so I had to have it. After a few centuries of waiting for it to download and install, I started playing: it was moving with probably 1-2 frames per second and when I was finally able to launch my bird the app would probably freeze till it reached the pigs. Yep, that’s how bad my first Android was! So no Angry Birds for me. Just an Angry Me.

Fast forward a few years, and I got a Windows Phone. And I got Angry Birds again. Actually I PAYED for it! (the next day it went on sale for free for a few days) That’s how much I wanted to play that game! It was really addictive and fun in the weirdest of weird ways. I was launching exploding birds into green pigs with mustaches. I was like “wtf logic?” but I was happy doing it. But it was funny, it was challenging, it was weird in the way fun games should be. It was frustrating when you got stuck for a few days on one level and it was greatly satisfying to see all those pigs die in the end (green bacon, yummy!). But then it all started to be a bit too much.

After the first game with its hundreds of levels, came another one, this one themed by seasons. After that came one themed after a movie. Then they were in space. Then in Star Wars. Then somewhere else, then back in Star Wars, then the pigs were flying away from them, then they were in Go-Karts and now they’re in Transformers! Not to mention that over time you could see them in pretty much every shop: Angry Birds toys, key rings, Lego, books, pens, furniture etc. I think the only thing I didn’t see was a Angry Birds condom. And by this time I’m like: “could you please stop trying to get into everything I like and enjoy!?”. I get it: you like the game, you like the idea, you enjoy playing it, that’s great! But why do a million spin offs that are basically the same birds only flying towards something else beside pigs, when you could just keep adding more and more levels to that original game. Give that game a million levels and that’s that.

Right now I don’t even like playing Angry Birds because every time I think about the name I keep thinking about how much it tries to still be part of our lives. I’m still waiting to see: “Angry Birds: The Hobbit Edition” or something like that. I will probably at some point go back to the original game for a few more sleepless nights killing pigs, but that doesn’t change the fact that every time I hear about a new Angry Bird, I become even angrier and wanna slingshot myself out of here.

How about you? Are you a hardcore Angry Birds fan? Have you ever been? Which is your favorite Angry Birds game (if any)?