Angry Birds Trilogy Announced

Lovers of flinging our innocent feathered friends into increasingly awkwardly stacked buildings can officially rejoice, as news has just reached Everybody Plays HQ that iPhone mega hit Angry Birds will finally making it's way over to proper games machines this Christmas, in the form of the Angry Birds Trilogy - a collection of three of the addictive feather flingering games. After launching a few years ago on the iPhone (and then every other platform under the sun, including Google Chrome, the web browser that lets you play the game for free), the series has gone on to reach almost Tetris like levels of recognition amongst people, thanks to its very simple premise. All you have to do is launch some rather round birds at the fort-like structures of the evil pigs, with the goal of completely destroying them, as revenge for them stealing your eggs. As you get further through the game, you get different types of birds with different abilities – whether it's exploding black birds, birds than can split into several smaller ones or the ability to drop explosive eggs on the poor unsuspecting piggies.

Along with the original Angry Birds game, the trilogy includes the themed Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio games, which all revolve around pretty much the same theme, just with different themeing. Seasons features birds and levels based around annual events like Halloween, Christmas, Valentines and Easter, whereas Rio ties in with the animated children's film 'Rio' from a few years ago (that one with the bulldog in a fruit hat). This time though, the birds have been kidnapped and taken to Rio de Janeiro, and rather than fighting against pigs, you'll be destroying the homes of a bunch of evil marmosets who've captured and caged a load of exotic birds.

Both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 versions of the collection make use of the Kinect and Move motion controllers to fire your birds around the screen – although, from the sounds of it, they're entirely optional, which is fantastic news for those who haven't yet bought Kinect/Move, or simply don't have the required space for the former. As for the 3DS version, which is somehow being described as “the first truly new Angry Birds handheld experience”, you'll get StreetPass functionality too, although there's no news on what this'll involve – whether it'll just be swapping high scores with people you walk past, or something all together more imaginative.

One thing we're not too chuffed about is that the American versions of the game have been announced at $30 to $40 – which, when you consider that each of the three games costs about 69p on the iPhone store, is quite frankly, extortionate. Even though there are apparently a few extra features involved, in the shape of some cutscenes, even when you take into account all the printing and distribution costs for making the console versions, we still very much doubt you reach $30 for a compilation of three $1 games.

Releasing around Christmas time this year, the Angry Birds Trilogy gives those of us unwilling to shell out hundreds on a fancy smart phone or tablet a chance to find out what all the fuss is about – although whether it'll justify the asking price remains to be seen. Hopefully, more details will come out over the coming months that'll justify it somewhat.