Angry Birds Space

Pigs … in … SPAAAAAAACE! Rovio's omnipresent Angry Birds franchise blasts off to new heights with Angry Birds Space, which brings the barreling birds and sinister pigs into a new universe with totally different physics than the previous Angry Birds lineup.

Space is the fourth Angry Birds title (after the original game, Seasons and Rio) and like the original and Rio, it's designed so you can start without ever having played Angry Birds before. (Seasons is considerably more difficult.) The plot, as usual, is simple and silly: alien pigs in Robotech suits have come through a wormhole to steal the birds' eggs, and the birds must blast off through the wormhole to rescue them.

The eggs are a MacGuffin, as you're blitzing through a (hopefully) endless series of levels to knock down towers full of pigs. The new thrill is in the game's new physics. Your Angry Birds can be drawn towards planets by their gravity fields, or float away in zero-G. Various levels daisy-chain or overlap gravity fields, too, giving the birds swirly, whirly flight paths. A visible trajectory guide helps you work out the geometry.

Beyond the new physics, Angry Birds Space is more time-sensitive than the previous games. As you knock objects off planets, they float around the board, and you can target them with succeeding birds. Timing several birds in a row becomes more critical, more often, than in the other Angry Birds games.

Several familiar birds are here, dressed in sharp new space gear, but some have new powers, and there are new birds, too. The triangular "speedy" bird can now be aimed, changing direction when he speeds up. A square bird turns objects to ice, making them easier for other birds to break through. The soundtrack is also new, but familiar—the usual carnival tones, and the usual squeaky cheers and sinister grunts. 

Occasional bonus levels offer in-game in-jokes. Landing on a golden egg could unlock a level making a riff on Space Invaders or Mario Brothers, for instance.

The elegance and smooth gameplay that set Angry Birds apart from some of its clones are here in full force. Angry Birds has just the right level of difficulty, and just the right amount of gradation between levels. It's easy enough that you can make progress without being a dedicated gamer, but difficult enough that it'll offer at least a few hours of challenge.

On iOS, you can break through problem levels by deploying the "Mighty Eagle," which blasts everything on the level. You get three Mighty Eagles for proceeding past the first few levels, and then you can buy Mighty Eagle packs in-game for prices starting at 99 cents for 20 eagles.

There aren't many levels, at least yet. The iOS versions have 95, while the standard Android version has only 65. Rovio has been good at providing free new levels in updates for its other games, though.

iPad, iPhone and Android Apps: Differences
I tested Angry Birds Space on a new ($499-829, 4.5 stars) to run the iPad and iPhone versions, an ($199, 4 stars) Android phone and an Android tablet ($499, 4 stars.) The iPhone app costs 99 cents, the Retina-ready "HD" iPad app costs $2.99, and the Android app has free ad-supported and 99-cent, no-ad versions. All the versions are around 20MB in size. The game ran very smoothly on all the devices, and the new iPad's Retina graphics were visibly smoother and more beautiful than the same game played on an iPad 2.

While Google's Play store shows a special Android tablet version for $2.99, Google Play said it was not compatible with my Asus Transformer Prime. But the generic, free version played just fine on the Transformer Prime, and I appreciated the extra real estate when aiming my birds. Some of the graphic assets can look pretty tiny on phones.

The iPhone and iPad versions of Angry Birds Space have a few advantages over the Android version. Most notably, both have an entire additional set of 30 levels called "Danger Zone" which you can only get on Android if you have a Samsung phone. That means most Android users will have 65 levels rather than 95.

The iOS versions let you win achievements and check leaderboards in GameCenter; the Android version has no social component, even though OpenFeint is popular on Android. And the Android app doesn't appear to have a Mighty Eagle option.

Rovio does need to add some more levels and bring the Android version up to feature parity with iOS. But that aside, Rovio has another win here for casual mobile gamers, earning Angry Birds Space our Editors' Choice award. On Android, as a free game, this is a no-brainer to download. Casual gamers on iOS should spring for the game, too.

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