When will nature learn? You just don’t mess with humanity unless you’re in the mood for a shotgun shell sandwich. Someone should have imparted that nugget of wisdom upon that monstrous bird before he done-gone devoured our poor hick’s pa, and then I wouldn’t have been stuck playing a game that had so much promise, but ultimately turned out to be as tedious and repetitive as watching cars drive in a circle for three hours.
If you ran down the checklist of Bird Assassin’s features, you’d probably be convinced it’s a pretty fun 2D shooter. It certainly looks the part with gorgeous sprites that animate well and a whole gaggle of different birds that explode into fuzzy, feathery piles of bloody mush. There are a few weapon upgrades, new guns to purchase and even a handful of silly bonus games to break up the carnage. But all that window dressing isn’t enough to disguise the fact that playing the darned game just isn’t any fun.
Oh, sure, sit down and play it for a few minutes and you’ll probably be delighted; it definitely puts its best talon forward and the initial thrill of introducing those vicious flying pests to your Winchester is pretty exciting. The premise of your father being murdered by an enormous bird for no apparent reason is ridiculous and outrageous, but it’s just the kind of thing that could spawn a lighthearted humorous shooter.
You take on the role of the vengeful hick, who does his best to eradicate a few winged species on his quest for revenge. Bird carcasses are stockpiled in that rusty old pickup and exchanged for more weapons. Kill birds, collect money, jump over bushes, purchase new guns to kill more birds. Copy-paste that formula about a dozen times and there’s the game. The vast majority of the levels are carbon copies, and the only variance is the quantity and type of enemies. The game’s method of increasing difficulty is to throw as many enemies on the screen at once, but their placement is just so random. There’s no actual level design or carefully placed enemies like in other 2D plaformers. The boss fight with the above-pictured gigantic chicken is clearly the best segment of the game, and the developers must agree since they used it three times without changing a thing.
There is an impressive array of feathery critters that are gunning to peck out your eyes, such as the kamikaze chickens and the dynamite-dropping owls, but they bombard you with no pattern or reason. Because the screen is consumed with birds, the obvious strategy becomes to kill them all from a safe location and then move on. Of course, that means you spend the entire game in the far-left corner inching along ever-so-slowly and unloading on wave after wave of feathery fowl. Not exactly thrilling.
Bird Assassin really had a lot of promise and certainly looks like a competent 2D shooter, but the lack of level design and repetitive, lackluster action made slaughtering my way through it’s brief 30-40 minute campaign a chore. I know it can seem nitpicky to be so critical of a $1 game, but there are too many better indie games out there to spend time and money on Bird Assassin.
Rating: 
Bird Assassin was provided for review by Social Loner Studios. It is available for 80 MS points ($1).
By at .
Pingback: Tweets that mention Xbox Indie Review: Bird Assassin « Armless Octopus, Bird Assassin Review for Xbox Live Indie Games (Xbox 360) -- Topsy.com