A Palette Swap –

Bird Mania 3D Christmas is basically the exact same game as the original Bird Mania 3D but with one major difference – online leaderboard support. This one new feature puts this version head and shoulders above the original even though the holiday theme puts a seasonal limit on its overall appeal.

Snow and a Santa hat makes it Xmas themed, right?

Just like the original, the goal of the game is to travel as far as possible while collecting stars, gathering new holiday ornaments which simply replace the balloons from the original game, and venturing through environments filled with Santa hats and other typical holiday propaganda.  Simply put, this Christmas edition is essentially a reskinned version of the original.

Flying elves replace the flying bees of the original

Do not let the bright and cartoony graphics fool you; Bird Mania is a difficult game as most runs end in less than one minute.  There are dozens of “achievements” to obtain but most are extremely difficult to unlock.  Further, the achievement explanations are also a bit misleading as some are quantity-based like “speed boost X amount of times,” or “collect X amount of stars.”  It wasn’t until after playing a few dozen rounds that I realized the game wants to the player to collect this absurdly high number of collectables in one run as opposed to collectively throughout all play-throughs.

Being straightforward makes it easy to play

Because the achievements are so difficult to unlock, replay value becomes a little more diminished.  However, the online leaderboards ease this pain by stacking your score against the rest of the world.  Conveniently, the game lets the player know when a new score or higher amount of collectables has been obtained immediately after the end of a run.   Restarting is also instantaneous which cuts down on waiting for frustrating load times.

The Day/Night cycle returns

The problems from the original game are still present such as the dashing attack is spotty at best, the 3D effect doesn’t really add anything, there are no power-ups or special abilities, and sometime enemies will overlap with background elements resulting in cheap deaths.  Still, there is a strange and addictive quality to Bird Mania 3D Christmas even though there are much better endless runners on the market.  If anything, this is a game that is easily accessible and built with a portable system in mind.  But for just a couple of bucks, this Christmas version is of higher quality than its predecessor simply because the online leaderboard functionality adds some additional replayability.  The question is, will gamers want to play a Christmas themed game come July?

Not As Good As: waiting for a discounted price next Christmas
Better Than: the original Bird Mania 3D
Also Try: watching Madagascar the movie

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com