Angry Birds Blast review
:: BLAST THOSE BIRDSPrice: Free
Version: 1.2.3
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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Angry Birds Blast is a matching puzzle game from Rovio that feels a lot like their own take on Candy Crush Saga. Depending on where you fall on free-to-play matching games, this could sound awesome or dreadfully dull. As not much of a matching person myself, I appreciate that Angry Birds Blast injects some elements to make it feel more skill-based, but its not quite enough to make it a “must play” by any means.
Balloon animals
There are a few ways to do matching games, and Angry Birds Blast is one that does not demand that you match three items of the same color. Instead, players face a game board of birds inside balloons that they can pop if they tap on any two or more balloons of the same color.
The goal of any given level is to pop enough balloons of particular colors at first, though later levels will also ask you to pop balloons to escort eggs in hot air balloons to safety and–in typical Angry Birds fashion–have you take out come pesky pigs.
Hot air rises
Whenever you pop a set of balloons in Angry Birds Blast, new sets of balloons rush in from the bottom of the screen. In later levels, there will be obstacles not too unlike the forts in the original Angry Birds games that will limit the number of balloons you can have on screen, but you can burst them apart by matching near them.
Beyond just simple matching, Angry Birds Blast rewards players that can match large numbers of balloons together. Matching higher numbers of balloons can grant power ups like rockets, bombs, and laser guns, which can help you create combos, clear the board, and complete your objectives a lot faster.
Free(-to-play) bird
Angry Birds Blast is–of course–a free-to-play game that has some gating mechanics to keep you from blazing through the game freely. Much like Candy Crush Saga, you have a limited number of lives that you can use trying to complete levels before being asked to wait for them to replenish.
There are also quite a few power ups that you can buy with currency earned or bought within the game, which can give you a significant advantage when trying to complete levels. It would be nice if these seemed like totally optional purchases, but the further and further I got into Angry Birds Blast, it seemed the more and more I needed these items to have a decent shot at passing certain levels.
The bottom line
Angry Birds Blast is a totally decent matching puzzle game that unfortunately gets more and more frustrating the further you get into it. Though the base game has some strong concepts that reward strategy, there's a grind to the game that will likely turn you off unless you're a dedicated matching game player.