Angry Birds HD updated with more levels... and crashiness

Angry Birds has been a phenomenal success, staying atop the App Store best seller list for months. I too, succumbed to the "bird in a slingshot" craze, as has my eight year old son who told me the other night he dreamed that he was in the slingshot.

Angry Birds HD was one of the first games that I downloaded for the iPad, but I was pretty disappointed. While the iPhone game was only $0.99, the HD version was $4.99, following an unfortunate trend where iPhone games are ported to iPad, cost much more, and don't add any new features. But Angry Birds HD actually had fewer features and levels than the iPhone version. Rovio told us at E3 that they'd be fixing that soon.

Well, as promised, an update came out a few days ago which added more levels and brought the game up to par with the iPhone version. Unfortunately the game has also added what one friend called "extreme crashiness action." So far I haven't actually lost any progress due to a crash, but it's fairly annoying. Hopefully there will be another update soon.

As a side note, developer Marco Arment noted back in May that the App Store was full of scams and ripoff apps surrounding Angry Birds, some which use the same name, and others which use the same artwork. It's sad to see that these apps are still there, and to know that they are profiting unfairly off the success of a popular game. Why Apple would allow some of these apps to remain and purge others is beyond me.

[Update 2010-07-08: the developer confirmed crash problems. A new update posted today seems to have solved the crashes.]

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