Angry Birds Rush is Rovio's newest soft-launch (excluding Angry Birds Match World) and it's not good. The whole premise of this game is an Angry Birds Endless runner. Except... it's not even endless.

While Angry Birds Rush is marketed as an endless runner, the game is neither endless nor particularly fun. By injecting dumb Coin Master mechanics into an endless runner framework, Rovio has built something that feels less like a game and more like a chore. Underneath the bad design choices, however, there is a genuinely good game fighting to get out.

The Identity Crisis: Gameplay That Isn't "Endless"

The core gameplay loop of Angry Birds Rush abandons your traditional three-lane mechanics (jumping and sliding) in favor of a bouncing-only system, where you just swipe your finger from left or right. While the bouncing concept itself isn't inherently bad, it is the only thing you do.

Worse yet, it isn't even endless. Twenty seconds into a run, you literally run out of things to bounce on, completely defeating the purpose of the genre.

• The Auto-Mode Insult: Perhaps the most baffling feature is the auto mode. Pressing this button makes the game play itself pixel-perfectly, so you can just sit back and watch, since who wants to play their mobile games anymore? If a game is designed to be played for you, why does it exist in the first place?
• The Coin Master Infection: Instead of focusing on high scores or distance, the goal of each run is only coin farming. These coins are used to rebuild the pigs' camp and you can also raid other players' bases, which are mechanics ripped straight from Coin Master (confirmed by the devs). These raid sections completely halt the flow of gameplay, with short, skill-less gameplay that do nothing but waste your time.

The only fix I can think of here is making the game a regular endless runner and the gameplay of that would look like the Angry Birds Epic characters in Sonic Dash. But we can also keep the bouncing gameplay as a short section in every run. Like how Minion Rush had tilt control sections in each run.

The Story Doesn't Make Any Sense

Mobile endless runners usually have a clear story. Subway Surfers has you running from a guard and his dog; Temple Run has prehistoric monsters; and Talking Tom Gold Run has you chasing a thief who stole your stuff.

Angry Birds Rush, on the other hand, makes zero narrative sense:

• The story kicks off with Hektor Porko (an Angry Birds Space villain who is on the pigs side) destroying the pigs’ camp.
• To make things worse, the birds are helping the pigs rebuild their camp by destroying pig contraptions and killing them in the way.

This completely flips the original storyline of the franchise. Why are the birds helping the pigs? A much better story would be: every run starts with a short cutscene of the pigs stealing the eggs using some Bad Piggies contraption so now you gotta go after them. This would instantly make the game more lore accurate. (This was my little brother's idea and it's clearly much better than what we have right now).

Graphics and "Cursed" Designs

In this game you cannot choose your character; instead, the game assigns one to you randomly after each run. As a result, you see birds like Red, Bomb, and Chuck a million times while birds like Silver and Ruby are rarely seen.

Furthermore, the character models (based on the Slingshot Stories designs) are way too expressive and they're not even angry. But what's ironic is how Rovio uses the Classic designs for the promotional material.

The main problems here are:

• They are overly expressive and "too happy."
• They have teeth.

The graphics however, are not bad. The environments are said to be iconic locations but they're just basic environments like "beach" "farm" "Paris". Angry Birds has so many iconic locations from Space to different worlds in Angry Birds Classic and Seasons, yet what we see is purely an imitation and are in no way "iconic".

Technical Stuff and The Economy

Beside the gameplay loop and art style, there are several structural issues:

• The Energy System: Adding an energy system to an endless runner is criminal and with evil intent, forcing players to pay just to keep playing.
• Repetitive Audio: The soundtrack features a single, looping track. And after ten minutes, it feels like you've heard it fifty times.

I feel like there’s a really good game hiding underneath all of this, but Rovio just buried it under mechanics that don't belong in an endless runner.

As a long time fan of Angry Birds I would be more than happy to see them make an actually fun game that also does well for them financially, but Angry Birds Rush is not fun, and is also not gonna make them any money.

In conclusion, I think a few major pivots, can make Angry Birds Rush an actually fun game to play. But in its current state, it's a major disappointment.