Game Reviews

Chicken Raid

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Chicken Raid
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| Chicken Raid

While Rovio continues to find new and inventive settings for the cast of Angry Birds, the rest of the mobile world seems obsessed with finding ways of aping the success of that particular series.

Few are as blatantly obvious in their aim as Chicken Raid, which looks and sounds every inch an Angry Birds clone.

Once you get to grips with the gameplay you'll realise that your first impression isn't entirely accurate, but by that point a whole host of other problems arise to sap away any enjoyment this title might have given.

Nobody here but us chickens

Chicken Raid turns the tables on the Angry Birds concept by making the feathered ones the object of your ire. By tapping blocks and wood and ice you have to trigger chain reactions that will obliterate all of the chickens on the level - even those still unhatched in their eggs.

The objects in each level are bound by the laws of gravity, and you'll have to predict the path of falling planks, plummeting stones, and swinging pendulums in order to wipe out the enemy as effectively as possible.

Your performance is graded at the end of each level, and if you've performed your task with the bare minimum of moves, you can expect to bag that coveted three-star rating.

There's some inventive level design at work, and some stages require you to really think your way through to victory. However, the inconsistent physics are maddening -some objects seem to react differently each time you play, which makes it hard to anticipate where they are going to fall.

Absolute turkey

Another problem is the often unpredictable nature of the stage design itself. You'll sometimes find yourself earning a three-star grade without actually knowing much about it. Conversely, it's not uncommon for perfectly logical plans to fail miserably, forcing your to adopt a trial-and-error' strategy to complete the stage.

Chicken Raid is entertaining at times, and when the level designs really click they're capable of providing some genuine moments of elation.

However, these are few and far between. Like so many games that aspire to step out of the shadow of Angry Birds, Chicken Raid only succeeds in illustrating what a yawning gap there is between the haves and the have-nots.

Chicken Raid

A well-intentioned attempt to bask in some of Angry Birds's reflected glory, Chicken Raid is a physics-puzzler which is at best mildly distracting and at worst downright broken
Score
Damien  McFerran
Damien McFerran
Damien's mum hoped he would grow out of playing silly video games and gain respectable employment. Perhaps become a teacher or a scientist, that kind of thing. Needless to say she now weeps openly whenever anyone asks how her son's getting on these days.