News Drive Angry: Angry Birds goes kart racing in free spin-off
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It's a well known fact that at some stage every video game franchise ever gets turned into a cash-in kart racing game. Last year saw F1 Race Stars, LittleBigPlanet Karting, and Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing Transformed battle for supremacy in the revived genre, but we all know that die-hard kart racing fans (if they still even exist) are pining for the undisputed king of the genre: Mario Kart.
However, everyone's favourite pudgy plumber isn't due to cross the line until next year when Mario Kart 8 belatedly races to Wii U until next year (we think it's because Nintendo caught wind of our Mario Kart 8 F1-style motorsport commentary and pushed the release back to incorporate it). And so to capitalise on his absence, developer Rovio has swooped in with Angry Birds Go, a kart racing spin-off to the astronomically popular Angry Birds series on mobile.
While we've seen an influx of Angry Birds spin-offs lately, most notably with the Angry Birds Star Wars series, Angry Birds Go is the first to spread its wings from the established bird-flinging formula.
All the hallmarks of kart racing are here: the visuals are vibrant and cartoony in keeping with the franchise, opponents can be blasted with a plethora of power-ups by collecting coins scattered across the downhill tracks and karts can be upgraded. Nothing exactly original then (there even appears to be levels that incorporate flying akin to Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed), but Mario would be mindful to keep an eye over his shoulder because Angry Birds Go will be free-to-play on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry when it's released on December 11th.
//www.youtube.com/embed/5xP12tpJrl8
Could Angry Birds Go knock Mario Kart off his well-worn podium? Well, it's actually not as absurd as it sounds. Given Angry Birds' potent popularity and the karting genre's vacant spot on the mobile market for the taking, this will surely be yet another huge hit for the Finnish firm Rovio, and the fact it will be freely available on such a wide variety of popular mobile devices will make it accessible to a significantly large audience compared to Nintendo's flagging Wii U.
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