Best of all, the use of QR codes is absolutely brilliant – no need to buy a $50 pad like Skylanders or Disney Infinity. It’s a super-slick system and I never experienced any delay or technical hitches of any kind. Put the Telepod on your device’s camera and boom: your physical figurine is transferred into the game, ready to use. Various Angry Birds Star Wars II toys come with new “Telepod” figurines, all of which feature a small QR code on the bottom.

It’s hard not to be suspicious of these exorbitant prices when there’s a second, even more lucrative way to get these pinch hitters into your level. Unlocking a power-up character for infinite use costs around $10 to $30 per character! Now this is piggy podracing! A few free power-ups are unlocked through normal play, but the rest are purchased in bulk and consumed. or you can just purchase 10 uses of the Darth Maul bird for around $8 and slice your way to the TNT directly. You can figure out the perfect way to swing Jar Jar around and hit an out-of-the-way TNT crate. Unfortunately, a heavy emphasis on purchasable power-ups undermines this finely-tuned balance and carefully crafted level design. Gigantic magnets also litter one batch of stages, wreaking havoc in all the right ways if you can figure out how to knock it into metal barriers that stand in your way. My personal favorites are the unlockable reversed-gravity underwater bonus stages you earn after using each bird enough times – your bird falls up, towards the water’s surface. Most levels’ three-star score thresholds are an intricate puzzle you’ll need to piece together using only the first one or two birds in your arsenal, intelligently using their special powers in just the right way. The days of Angry Birds being nothing more than a casual “fling and forget” experience are long gone. Like the well-designed birds, Rovio’s stage design also shines brighter than ever. Plenty of Jedi and Sith characters once again feature a lightsaber that can slice through pesky barriers. Episode 1 Anakin is pulled through the air by a podracer that you can redirect mid-flight. The Emperor Pig shoots Force lightning that travels through metal blocks and chains to nab hard-to-reach foes.

Fun!Īlthough Jar Jar is the best of the bunch, all the other characters’ new powers are great to use and cleverly integrate key movie moments. A few stages let you gleefully grapple onto a TNT crate, swing it around your bird, then release it at the perfect moment to detonate in the midst of a Sith Pig structure. Even better, you can grapple onto objects, and even pigs. In flight, you can tap anywhere on screen to launch a grappling-hook tongue that attaches itself to walls, altering his trajectory in a swinging arc. Incredibly, Jar Jar Binks is probably the most fun of the bunch. Regardless, Rovio makes up for Jango, Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, & co.’s comparative lack of star power by giving them genuinely interesting and fun special abilities. Plus, since the prequel films already feel cartoony, applying the Angry Birds style doesn’t feel quite as special as the last game’s take on a Pig-filled Death Star or Bird Han Solo. But while younger kids will likely get a kick out of Pig Grievous or Bird Jar Jar, the appeal of the prequel trilogy is, to put it mildly, more limited than the original for older players. It’s adorable – piggy podracing opponents must be knocked from their perches, a piggy Jango Fett hovers through the air firing a massive blaster, and plenty more. This time it’s the prequel trilogy up for parody, and now both Jedi and Sith characters are playable. Like the original Angry Birds Star Wars, you’re once again launched into a bird-ified version of the Star Wars universe. It’s a testament to Rovio’s seemingly never-ending supply of clever ideas and persistent emphasis on polish that flinging all of these silly birds still puts a smile on my face. Angry Birds Star Wars II is the (count ‘em!) seventh main-line Angry Birds game released since the series made its debut less than four years ago.

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