Birdie Shoot
(OS X Compatible)
Company: Macplay
Price: $19.99
http://www.macplay.com
I just love the product description on Macplay’s website. It sums up very well what the idea is behind this game. Thanks to the magic of “Copy and Paste”, here it is:
The season for digital birdie hunt is under way again!
Crazy Birds are on the run. They have all been infected by the ASE (Avis-Spongiforme-Enzephalopathy) virus and now threaten to infect other birds all over the world.
Use your anaesthetization gun to bring down as many birds as possible so they can be inoculated and save the world from those crazy birds.
That does indeed sum up the “story” of the game, but it does not adequately inform you just how fun this simple game is.
In Birdie Shoot, you are the bird hunter. If you character, you see nothing cut the cross hairs of your gun. While the official description of your weapon is an “anaesthetization gun”, this sucker is a rapid-fire large shotgun. Anaesthetization gun, indeed!
Your job is to blow the heck out of all the birds you see. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Watch them all fall! You control your gun by moving your mouse to aim, and the mouse button is your trigger. Don’t forget that you do have to reload your gun after every ten shots, however, or you will hear an empty click-click until you do. A quick click of the space bar will reload your gun.
Game play is, of course, not very complicated. In fact, there is nothing at all complicated about Birdie Shoot. The graphics are very cartoonish (In a good way!), and while you are blowing birds out of the air, there is no blood. A lot of screams of dying birds (Funny sounds, not terror screams), some spiraling death flights of the feathery fowls, but that is about the extent of the violence. It is more comical than sadistic. My eight-year-old loves the game, in fact. I have no problem letting her play it.
Birdie Shoot has four game-play settings, which are jungle, sea, forest, and arctic. There are many different types of birds to shoot, though not as many as I would like. Birds do try to avoid your shots, but only by speeding up. No evasive action here. You can shoot the same bird multiple times for even more points as well. Finally, you can play a tournament level with up to four players.
The multi-player mode, however, is not online. You have to get up out of your chair to let the other players have their turn. Also a problem is the points system. There are some items you can shoot, over and over, to crank up your score. So if you are playing a tournament with other players, you can simply shoot the non-moving targets, which are worth more points than almost all the flying birds.
There are other surprise items that show up on the four levels you can shoot to score even more points, as well as things you can shoot to loose points, but I don’t want to spoil those surprises.
Birdie Shoot is part of Macplays “Value Series” of games. These are inexpensive games that offer a fun game at a good price. The types of games that you can buy without a fear of loosing sixty bucks on a dud. At only twenty dollars, Birdie Shoot is a fun game. At least for the first ten times you play it. Afterwards, it becomes somewhat repetitive.
System Requirements:
Power Macintosh G3 300 MHz
Mac OS 8.6, 9.2.2 or later / 128 MB RAM,
Mac OS X 10.1 or later / 128 MB RAM
3D Video Card w/8MB Memory
Overall, a fun, almost shareware feeling, game. At twenty dollars, you won’t go broke with this purchase.
MacMice Rating: 3 out of 5
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