Pocket Pigeons – a Good Attempt at Dethroning Angry Birds but far from it
by Jonathan Lonczak
Aug 2, 2011 9:38 AM –
Install
Pocket Pidgeons. The invasion of the blue birds has arrived. Defend yourself. Your sacred tree is under attack! Use your finger to draw flight paths for your red pigeons and keep the evil birds from taking over your tree! As the time of day progresses, the enemy becomes faster and more of them start to appear; but you’ll unlock more pigeons to add to your army by shooting down the yellow hawks in the sky! Hit multiple blue jays with a single bird to earn huge combos and work towards the world high score! With online scores and pigeon upgrades once per level, you’ll learn to swiftly dominate your enemy at the swipe of your finger.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Droid Incredible 2, Sony Xperia Play
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Excellent graphics in a hand drawn style!
- Unique animations for changes in time!
- Solid gameplay mechanic!
- Original ideas!
- Amusing story and theme!
Cons
- No use of accelerometer, vibration, or sound.
- Game starts off very slow.
- Can feel boring from lack of soundtrack.
- No achievements system such as OpenFeint or ScoreLoop.
Features:
Pocket Pigeons is an interesting casual action game in the same category of games as Angry Birds, but with an entirely unique style of gameplay. The object of the game is to protect the sacred tree from the hordes of oncoming invaders. In order to accomplish this you must send out aerial warriors to knock down and destroy the oncoming hordes and to arrange for combinations in order to gain more points and to ensure victory. The game also features an upgrade-able arsenal of aerial warriors and an online ranking system to compare yourself to other players.
Various types of birds will fly across the screen with the intention of taking over your homeland and the only way to stop them is to throw your birds against them and try to perform combos to take down multiple birds at once. The way you launch your birds against the oncoming hordes is by drawing a line from your launch pad to the birds that you wish to attack. Your warrior will then fly the trajectory that was drawn for him and will hit the target if it is in his flight path. After striking another bird he will bounce and begin to fall unless he strikes another bird on his way down.
As your kill count heightens and you perform more combos you will be able to upgrade your army. The available upgrades are: decreased roll back time, increased flight speed, and adding another pigeon to your army. “Decreased Roll Back Time” decreases the amount of time that it takes for your pigeons to return back to base in order to be launched again. By upgrading this statistic it allows you to fire your armies out at a faster rate than you were previously able to. Since this increases the fire rate for all of your army this is an excellent statistic to upgrade. “Increased Flight Speed” increases how quickly your pigeons move to their targets. Since this also decreases the amount of time that your pigeons stay away from base and increases the likelihood that your armies will strike effectively; this is perhaps the best attribute to upgrade. Finally, the “Add Another Pigeon” option allows you to add another bird to your army and so allows you to fire out your troops more rapidly. All of these upgrades are extremely effective and in order to achieve the maximum high score you will need to be upgrading all of them throughout the game.
Pocket Pigeons also figures a mysterious hawk bird which provides a huge point bonus if struck down. This giant yellow fiend will appear at the top of the screen flying away from the sacred tree and should be shot down as quickly as possible.
Finally, the game includes a global high score board and an online ranking system. This allows you to compare yourself versus other players and increases the games addictive factor. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of people playing this game and the high score board only includes 155 total players at the time of review. This game could benefit greatly if it utilized the OpenFeint or ScoreLoop systems instead of using its own high score board. I would also like to see the incorporation of achievements into the gameplay in order to make the game more addictive and entertaining.
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Pocket Pidgeons Gameplay 1
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Pocket Pidgeons Gameplay 2
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Pocket Pidgeons Gameplay 3
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Pocket Pidgeons Gameplay 4
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Pocket Pidgeons Upgrades
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Pocket Pidgeons Defender Rank
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Pocket Pidgeons Global High Score
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Pocket Pidgeons Paused
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Pocket Pidgeons Main Screen
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Pocket Pidgeons Help
Fun Factor:
Pocket Pigeons is entertaining. The graphics to the game are excellent and definitely would create a more enjoyable environment if the game created a better sense of urgency or added more addictive factors. There is no music to this game and no achievement system. This greatly reduces both the game’s fun factor and addictive properties.
After playing this game for about 5 minutes I became extremely bored of it. The lack of sound was a huge contributing factor here. At least with Angry Birds I have sound effects for throwing the bird, for hitting the crates, hitting the pigs, and a musical soundtrack in between. With Pocket Pigeons I had nothing. No sound effects, no soundtrack, no music of any kind. Without these incorporated in to the game, it becomes much less enjoyable.
The flight path mechanism for throwing the birds was also set to a very slow pace. The game did pick up speed as I played through it, but in general I thought it was too easy for too much of the beginning and I would become bored before the game got challenging. Either the developer needs to add in-game achievements to motivate people to play through the first few levels or he needs to increase the speed of the gameplay.
Addictive:
I did not find this game very addictive due to its lack of soundtrack and achievement system. The graphics were excellent and I think the mechanics are solid, but the game needs more refinement in order to increase its addictive factor. As the game currently stands I think it will be difficult for many of us to play it for extended periods of time, since the lack of music and sound effects makes the game feel very boring.
Graphics:
The graphics for Pocket Pigeons are excellent. I have to say that the artwork for this game is better than many games in this genre and I was extremely pleased with the game’s style. As you play through a level the time changes and the settings will go through the various times of day: morning, noon, and night.
I thought all of the animations were well done and the sprites were well done. On the graphics portion of the game I would have to say I have no complaints.
Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:
Pocket Pigeons makes absolutely no use of any of these factors: the accelerometer, vibration, or sound. This is probably the only game I have ever tested that has completely neglected 3 of the most important factors for gaming. This needs to be fixed in future updates in order for this game to succeed and really draw a following.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Game,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Angry Birds,
Arcade & Action,
Casual,
Pocket Pidgeons,
Pocket Pigeons
Categorised in: Arcade & Action, Casual
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