Say Goodbye to Your Free Time, Angry Birds 2 is Here!

While it may seem like ages now, it was only a couple of years ago that we downloaded Angry Birds as one of the first apps on our phones. With over a billion downloads, no matter how much you despise it, it is hard to neglect the fact that the game had its impact

Several years, thirteen sequels and three spinoffs later, we’re finally welcoming the numbered sequel to the most-popular smartphone game of all time: Angry Birds 2.

So what’s new this time? For starters, the stages now consist of multiple screens, which have to pass one-after-another. You’ve finally been given the freedom to choose the bird of your choice in order to destroy the pigs’ forts. You have to be more strategic though, as you can’t spend all your birds on one level.

There are also new spells such as Blizzards, Golden Ducks and Hot Chilis to assist you in passing a level. There is a new Arena level where your goal is to achieve a high score and match it with competitors worldwide.

There is less linearity now, in that the stage designs are never fixed. That means repeating a level multiple times will give you a new fort design to shoot at. After every few levels, you’ll get a boss fight, another first for the series. To be honest, most of these changes should’ve hit long ago but only now there time has arrived.

Lastly, Angry Birds on Android and iOS is free, and you know what it means: In-app purchases, and those too quite hard. You’ll earn gems by completing challenges, daily rewards and more. These gems can be spent on multiple objects, most-importantly on lives, which you’ll lose repeatedly, and then earn back in 30 agonizing minutes. You can watch a 30-second advert but that offer too won’t be unlimited.

Still, it’s free-to-play and you can try it out anytime. It would’ve been good though to not have such an annoying system still prevalent here, after the acceptable solution of the original Angry Birds.

Download it for iOS here and download it for Android here.