Category Archives: Entertainment

Rovio Applies “Spot” Remover to Angry Birds Seasons

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It’s over. Angry Birds magic spots: RIP.

In a previous posting, I revealed the secret behind magic spots in the Seasons Greedings section of Angry Birds Seasons. In essence, if a bird hit a specific location in just the right way, a Santa-hatted pig would tilt and explode with atypical force, resulting in much more damage and a much higher score than otherwise possible.

There had been some discussion on the web as to whether or not these spots were an unintended bug (perhaps left over from some internal testing version of the game) or a deliberate feature. I hopefully opted for the latter view. I was wrong.

Today, I received a reply from Rovio (the creators of Angry Birds) confirming what I had already suspected from my own recent play: the magic spots were removed as part of the Valentines (Hogs and Kisses) update to Angry Birds Seasons. The Rovio developer added: “Sadly, it was a bug in the system and we needed to fix it to make things work regarding long term updates.”

I can’t argue with a developer wanting to fix a bug. But it does present a dilemma for the subset of Angry Birds players interested in attaining a top score on the Game Center Leaderboard. If you hope to make it anywhere near the very top (at least the top 100), you’ll need the big scores that come from hitting the magic spots. This means that, if you are new to Angry Birds Seasons, you can forget ever reaching the upper echelon of the Leaderboard. Similarly, if you are an established player and had hoped to improve your standing by getting better magic spot scores, you can forget that as well (I include myself in this latter group, despite the fact that I am fortunate enough to already have one of the very top scores).

This is disappointing and, in some sense, unfair — as it gives a lucky subset of Angry Birds players an advantage over everyone else. But there is nothing to be done about it. Rovio has applied spot remover to the bug/feature and it’s game over.

[Speaking of top scores, I have read that it is possible to “hack” at least some versions of Angry Birds — allowing you to get high scores by cheating. The most egregious examples of this are in Angry Birds for the iPhone; the top score today is a clearly hacked 40,000,001,090,256,896. If possible, when such impossibly high scores are detected, I’d like to see them removed from the Leaderboard.]

Update: If you really want to access these magic spots again, you might yet be able to do so — if you still have the prior 1.1.1 version of Seasons. To accomplish this trick, you need to downgrade the app on your iOS device back to the old version. When you are done, you can re-upgrade to the latest version again. The only question is: Will this mess up your high score data (because the downgraded version is “unaware” of the Hogs & Kisses section)? I haven’t tried this yet, so I can’t say for certain. But I suspect not. However, to be safe, make sure you have saved a copy of the high-scores file (highscores.lua) so you can put it back if needed.

Angry Birds Magic Spots

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If you play Angry Birds Seasons, you’ll want to know what I am about to reveal!

While working my way through the Seasons Greedings section of Angry Birds Seasons, I would occasionally stumble over something surprising and wonderful. After taking careful aim and releasing my first bird shot on a given level, the bird would hit its target and….bam! All hell would break loose. In an instant, all (or almost all) of the pigs and blocks were destroyed in a massive blast. When the smoke cleared, I saw that I had bagged a new high score — much higher than I could have otherwise attained. It could be tens of thousands of more points than the minimum needed for a 3 star score (see my Angry Birds: The All-Purpose Guide to Three Stars [Part 1 and Part 2] for more on how to achieve 3 star scores).

What was going on? I didn’t know. So I went to angrybirdsnest.com, an Angry Bird’s fan site, seeking the answer. There I learned that these supernova explosions were due to “magic spots.” It turns out that, if a bird hits a certain spot just right, it will trigger one of these supernova explosions. At first, people thought that these spots were glitches in the game’s software and that they would be wiped out in a future update. But no, they seem to be intentional. And they remain.

Here’s how they work:

• As far as I know, Magic Spots only exist in Seasons Greedings. And they only exist on levels where there is a pig wearing a red Santa hat. I am not sure that every level with a Santa pig also has a magic spot. But if the level doesn’t have a Santa pig, there is no magic spot.

Beyond this, there is no way to tell where, or if, a magic spot exists on a given level. That is, nothing about the magic spot location looks special in any way.

• Although I am not 100% sure of this, it appears that a magic spot explosion is possible only on the first shot of a level. After that, all plays out normally. Certainly, after the Santa pig has been destroyed, your chance is over. [Update: I have now confirmed that magic spot explosions can work after the first shot – if the Santa pig remains untouched after the initial shot.]

• Actually, the name “magic spot” may be a bit of a misnomer. The trigger for a supernova is apparently not so much hitting a precise spot as it is hitting a spot that causes the necessary effect to the Santa pig. Typically, you may need to get the pig to roll in a certain direction. Simply destroying the Santa pig will not have the desired effect. A corollary to this is that there may be more than one spot that causes the explosion.

All of this means it can be quite frustrating to reproduce a magic spot explosion. You can hit what seems to be the the correct location in the exact way needed — yet no supernova occurs. This is probably because your hit did not have the needed effect on the Santa pig. You may have to try the same shot over and over — dozens of times — just to get one supernova.

• The damage that results from a supernova will vary each time you hit the magic spot. Even if you get a successful shot off, you may want to try again. Your next success may yield an even higher score. The best spots are the ones that allow you to finish off a level with just the one shot. I can’t say this with certainty, but it seems that my supernova scores are higher than they would be if I had accomplished the same destruction with a conventional shot. It’s as if you get special bonus points for the supernova devastation.

Magic Spot Levels

Here are my four favorite levels with magic spots (there are others beyond these four):

1-18: Aim your bomb bird for the triangular gap near the center top. If you do it right, when the bomb explodes, you’ll wipe everything out in one shot. My best effort yielded a high score of 119,100.

1-21: Get your first shot to go through the snow, right under the area where the Santa pig resides. Do it just right and the resulting explosion will send sticks flying. I’ve never achieved complete destruction here. You’ll need one or two more birds to finish off the level. But you’ll wind up with a higher score than without the supernova.

1-24: Hit the blocks that form a ceiling above where the Santa pig resides. According to reader comments on angrybirdsnest.com, the goal is to get the Santa pig to roll 90 degrees to the right. I can’t confirm this. However, I can confirm that if you hit the ceiling in the right spot, you can wipe out the level with just the one shot. You won’t get total destruction with every blast. But if you do, you can get a score in excess of 100,000 (my best is 98,310).

1-7: This is it: the motherlode, the super-est supernova of all. To set off the explosion, send the bomb bird in a high arc so that it lands directly atop the final right-most column of bricks. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, even if you hit the spot, nothing will happen. But when it works, watch out. You can achieve a near total wipe-out leading to incredible scores. Initially, my high score for the level was 73,300, good enough for three stars. After a couple of magic spot explosions, I pushed my score to 117,510 — almost 45,000 points more than my prior three-star score!

Are Magic Spots Good or Evil?

One the one hand, magic spots add an element of fun and surprise to Angry Birds. When you hit one these spots, especially after an hour of trying, you’ll jump up and cheer. On the other hand, they add a further element of luck to the game — which I regard as a negative.

Why luck? Aside from the telltale Santa pig, there is no way to know if a magic spot potentially exists for a given level. Even with the Santa pig, you don’t know for sure that a magic spot is present — or where it may be. Further, no matter how skillful you are, it seems impossible to achieve the supernova explosion with any reliability — even if you know exactly where to aim. Yet, if you don’t master these shots, you have no chance of climbing to the top of the Leaderboard. The magic spots are bit like finding the golden eggs. But the eggs don’t affect your score.

On balance, I vote thumbs up for the spots. Once you discover them, they become yet another intriguing twist to this great game. As far as I know, magic spots exist only in Seasons Greedings. I am hopeful that we have not seen the last of them.

P.S. For those of you who are curious: My Angry Birds Seasons high score is 6,430,780 (currently I am 17 on the Game Center Leaderboard).

Final Thoughts on Lost

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I don’t want to beat a dead horse. Or sound like a broken record. Or whatever the proper metaphor here is. But I want to discuss Lost one last time.

Given today’s release of Lost’s final season on disc, and with the benefit of having had three months since the final episode was broadcast, I felt the time was right for some considered reflection as to what it all means.

Last we talked, I gave initial praise to the final episode, while noting that “the more I reflected on the episode, the more my enthusiasm began to wan.” I went on to explain why. Earlier in the season, I had expressed my growing disappointment with the direction the plot was headed. Clearly, I was not happy with Lost’s final season.

I remain disappointed. Even more so now.

At the end of Season 5, I was hyped almost beyond belief. The great final scene, with the bomb exploding and the inspired fade-to-white, left me at the edge of my seat. With an eight month wait before the story would continue, my impatience and anticipation for Season 6 could not have been higher if I had been a resident on the space station. When the Season 6 premiere finally arrived, I was sure I would be treated to a great ride And when the ride was over, I would buy the entire six seasons on disc so that I could take the ride again.

It didn’t work out that way. I will never watch Season 6 again. Not will I watch anything close to the entire series again. Why? Because the series ending was so disappointing that it has colored everything that came before it, casting it all in a negative light. I see this much more clearly now than I did last May. To start all over again, knowing where I will eventually wind up, not longer seems fun. Season 6 ruined it all for me.

Specifically…the flash-sideways plotline of Season 6 was by far the biggest disappointment. From my perspective, it was a complete mistake to go in that direction. The flash-sideways added a spiritual “purgatory” and “heavenly redemption” element to the show that I was never able to take seriously. It felt phony and contrived. It not only had no relevance to anything that came before, it seemed almost at odds with the direction the show had been heading in earlier seasons. Worst of all, it rendered almost everything that happened on the island as ultimately meaningless. What did it matter who lived, who died, or why, if they all ended up here for a happy reunion and a joyous stroll into the white light? What a letdown.

And that H-bomb blast at the end of last season? Another fizzle. Yes, it seemed to kick the characters back to the present. But, aside from the death of Juliet, nothing else had changed. I had expected something more.

As for the island scenes in Season 6, they were a disappointment as well. Too much time was spent having characters wander about the geography, with the only significant plot advancement coming in the final five minutes. Occasionally, even the plot advancements were rendered almost meaningless by the events that followed (e.g., we finally get to see inside the temple — only to have it, and almost everyone inside it, destroyed a week or so later). Too often, I found myself bored with the slow pace of an episode, my finger hovering over the fast-forward button.

The fact, lamented by numerous fans, that too many of the mysteries of the show were left unanswered became a minor point for me, in light of all of this other trouble. I imagined so many ways that the time wasted with flash-sideways and island-wandering could have been better spent. Instead, the writers/producers squandered it away.

I do look forward to watching the mini-episode epilog included with the final season package. The preview that I saw on the Web looked promising. And, after more time has passed, I am sure I will rewatch some of my favorite episodes again — including my absolute favorite, the Season 3 finale, “Through the Looking Glass.” But that’s about it.

Despite everything, I will always consider Lost to be, overall, one of the finest achievements of weekly series television. The final season’s mistakes can’t completely undo this. Still, the final season did ruin, for me, what I would have otherwise ranked as my single favorite television achievement ever. Now it’s just somewhere in my top ten. Not bad. But it could have been so much better.

Lost finale: Great but…

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As an initial reaction, I found the the final episode of Lost to be fantastic. In every sense of the word. The tearful reunions, the death of FLocke, the passage of the torch to Hurley. It was a satisfying conclusion that was well worth the wait. The final scene, with Jack’s eye closing and the plane flying away, was truly poetic.

However, the more I reflected on the episode, the more my enthusiasm began to wane. The part of the finale that focused on island events held up well enough (as long as I could get past the somewhat silly notion that turning off and on a magical light at the bottom of a cave was the key to humanity’s survival). It was exciting and rewarding to watch.

My real problem was with the flash-sideways universe. Superficially, it too was wonderful to watch. The reunions of all those characters, many of whom had died seasons ago, was touching and heartwarming — providing me with a sort of personal redemption for all the time and energy I had devoted to the show over the years. However, I eventually realized that I was being seduced by these mini-happy endings. As enjoyable, well-written and well-acted as they were, they were covering up serious flaws.

The entire flash-sideways universe turns out to be a microcosm of the main problem with Lost itself. It is not so much that there are so many mysteries that remain unanswered. It’s that what answers we have and what mysteries remain just don’t hold together well. There are internal contradictions, things that don’t make sense, and a lack of a basic framework to hold it all together.

Here are just a few of the questions that I find myself asking about what happened in the finale:

Why did this flash-sideways sort-of-purgatory exist at all? Is it a necessary passage for everyone who dies or just the people related to the island?

Why was the flash-sideways universe constructed to represent a better version of a world that sort-of might-have existed if Oceanic 815 had never crashed? Of all the possible sort of purgatories that one could imagine, why this one?

With almost all the characters in the flash-sideways universe having a much better time than they ever did in real life, why should they be in such a hurry to leave once they discover what is going on? [Okay, I know going to some sort of “heaven” must feel even better…but still.]

For that matter, the characters’ awakening seemed to depend on Desmond putting the wheels in motion. Desmond only did this after being awakened himself, apparently due to the “test” that Widmore gave him on the island. What if Widmore never gave that test? Would they all remain in the flash-sideways world forever? Or would they gradually awaken anyway?

[Speaking of Desmond’s test, why was it even necessary? If Desmond had failed the test, it’s not like there was a Plan B. Why wouldn’t Widmore trust Jacob’s advice and assume Desmond had the necessary power to survive the light?]

Further, why was it important that these flash-sideways characters be unaware of the true nature of their existence — until after Desmond begins his final quest? And why was the simple realization that they were dead all they needed to know to move on?

If Jack didn’t really have a son (as he was told in the episode), then what exactly was his imaginary son? All the other main characters were “real” now-dead people. What happens to the son and all the remaining people (including Ben) after our heroes leave? Does the flash-sideways world continue without them? Is Jack’s son suddenly an orphan? Does anyone remaining in purgatory wonder what happened to these people? Or is the purgatory world just rewritten as if they never existed?

[Speaking of Ben, I found his role in the finale to be disappointing. After having a grand performance the week before, where he kills Widmore and seems to become FLocke’s ally again, all of that is dropped in the finale as he largely fades into the background until he meekly emerges as Hurley’s #2.]

It also seemed a bit odd that the final gathering at the church was so focused on Jack. Everyone was waiting for Jack’s arrival — from people who died before Jack to people who died long after Jack. Why was Jack’s arrival the key event needed for everyone else? Why not Kate? Or Hurley? Or Sawyer? Was this Jack’s personal purgatory? Did the other characters have their own?

And what was Penny doing in the church? She was not one of the island people so important to Jack. In fact, Jack hardly knew her at all. Based on what Jack’s father explained, she didn’t seem to fit.

Worst of all, after all the build-up and promises, the sideways universe turns out to have nothing to do with the main story line. I had assumed that somehow the sideways universe was a consequence of the Jughead H-bomb blast at the end of season 5. But no. All that blast seemed to accomplish was to move the key characters from the 1970’s back to the present. The only real purpose of the whole flash-sideways universe appears to have been to offer a way for the producers to give us a quasi-happy ending.

Many of the answers to my questions are admittedly not critical to know. But, to me, if you’re going to build a fantasy world and ask us to invest in it for an entire season, you can at least put it in a context that is more than a set of arbitrary “rules” with no way to predict or understand why any rule is the way it is.

If pressed, I could come up with answers to some of the questions. But they would be ones that I made up, not necessarily the “true” ones. I know some will say that the answers don’t really matter — that there may in fact be no true answers. It’s all meant to remain a mystery and be open to different interpretations — that was the deliberate intent. It’s only the redemption of the characters that matters. I am willing to go with this idea up to a point — but the episode pushed too far beyond that point for me.

Finally, I confess to have trouble with the whole spiritual direction that Lost took this season. Had I known, back in seasons 1 and 2, that this was to be the ultimate answer to Lost’s mysteries, I might not have kept going. It did not seem to be where Lost was promising to go back then. I had expected a more science-fiction direction — and I am disappointed that this was not the case. But that’s just me.

Still, in then end, I’m glad I did stay around. Despite its flaws, Lost remains one of the most ambitious, intriguing, and thought-provoking series ever on television. I truly enjoyed the ride. We won’t see its likes again anytime soon — if ever. Aloha Lost — I’ll miss you.