This is neither here nor there, but I'm wondering if anyone else has an opinion on this: Does anyone find the physics in Angry Birds INCREDIBLY frustrating? There seems to be very little rhyme or reason to the way momentum is transferred. And the material modeling just makes me want to bite my tongue off.
I've heard this complaint before, and it puzzles me. Figuring out the odd physical rules (to manipulate them) is almost the entirety of the game. If you don't enjoy the physics, then you don't enjoy the game, but blaming the physics for your non-enjoyment is like criticizing Pac-Man because you die when you run into a ghost.
I don't believe that this is intrinsically correct. Part of what makes I feel makes a game good or not is if the rules are consistent and can be extrapolated.
If every action is a special case, the game is frustrating to any player trying to build a mental model of the cause and effect relationships within the world.
Now on the other hand, the premise of a game and it's basic interactions may be enjoyable, or at least conceptually enjoyable, by themselves. There need not be the call for the player to accept the gestalt as it is.
Personally, I'd like to see an Angry Birds clone that made it a little easier to understand what's going to happen when you launch a game object in a particular way.
Inconsistency can certainly break a game, but where's the inconsistency in Angry Birds?
I've got three stars on every level through the first ten worlds, and only a couple of levels seemed to require lucky breaks for maximum points. 3-1 was the one time I gave up and found the three-star solution on youtube.
