‘Angry Birds Go!’ has $100 in-app purchases, is more shop than game

Angry Birds Go!, the inevitable Mario Kart-style racing game for iOS, has wallet-bursting in-app purchases of US$100. That’s  US$100 for a virtual kart you’ll never get to touch. Go! has power-ups, karts, upgrades and extra piggies and birds that can all be paid for which is nothing out of the ordinary (in-app purchases have been around for years now), but Go! is more like a shop than a game, said PocketGamer.

Is Rovio, the developer of the mega-successful Angry Birds franchise justified in its actions? An early preview of Go!, snagged from the New Zealand iTunes store, paints a grim picture of a company hungry for money. Sweet, virtual currencies. Go! is free-to-play, but at what cost?

No.

“It’s just hard to have fun when you can’t afford upgrades to your kart, when you’re too slow for the competition, and when your bird simply runs out of gas.” This tail-ends the review and doesn’t bode well for the gamer.

Purchasing an in-app upgrade is all well and good, just not when it’s the only way to advance in a game. The US$100 we spoke of earlier is for the “Big Bang Special Edition car” which we presume will tear the Angry Birds universe apart with a rocket-fulled kart that spits green Dollar bills from its exhaust.

One of the weightier issues is that Go! looks like a tremendous amount of fun. Just watch that video and try not to be sucked in by the hypnotic sounds, silky graphics and what will be excellent gameplay. It’s a non-issue if for those of us who can afford to burn US$100, but for the other 99%, Go! is going to frustrate. We’ve listed all the ways Go! will rob us of our hard-earned cash, if you allow it to): Power-ups, kart upgrades, coins (the concept of spending money on money always irked us), cars, game modes and, well… bird energy. The racers “tire” after five races and you can choose to wait it out for the energy to refill, or simply pay to get back onto the track.

Toy giant Hasbro, makers of He-Man, will release this Go! racing track along with the game

So that’s every aspect of Go! monotised then. Go! launches worldwide 11 December 2013 so start saving, because you’ll need that Christmas bonus to appease these Angry Birds.

Images via PocketGamer