Kamikaze Pigs Review

Developer: MostroGames
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad 2

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Kamikaze Pigs believes that the only good pig is a dead pig. Bacon is delicious, after all. For those who agree, this game should satisfy the urge to see lots of pigs die because Kamikaze Pigs is all about blowing up pigs, causing them to crash and explode into other pigs to kill them, creating chain reactions that leave a lot of dead pig soldiers in their wake. Who’s going to call their mothers? Someone else.

The game makes destroying legions of pigs easy by just tapping to fire a bomb at a screen full of pigs in order to start the pig destruction. Then just sit back and watch the pig death fly. There’s lots of explosions and plenty of dead pigs afterward. This game serves as a really good reason to listen to the music of Pig Destroyer.

Kamikaze Pigs is just incredibly random, though. There’s so much going on that it can be difficult to parse out just what the best way to destroy everything to get the maximum six stars will be. Yes, six stars. Three for death and destruction, three for taking out stars floating about in the level. Considering that certain enemy types will do more damage randomly based on which upgrades are bought, it contributes to the entropy.

The problem is that while random chaos can be fun, it also takes a lot of the fun out of succeeding because I don’t know whether I succeeded because I was smart in my bomb placement and timing, or if it was just fortunate happenstance. Some levels make it apparent – one boss level requires players to wait until tanks are facing toward the large object to be destroyed. There are other clever placements in the chaos, but because there’s so much chaos, just trying to make the biggest initial explosion works too well. Plus, there’s just little incentive to actually get all the stars because hey, random chaos.

It’s a shame, really. A game like Kamikaze Pigs could be tons of fun. But there’s just not enough player agency here to justify this as more than just a novel concept.