Happy Street review (iOS / Universal)

♫ “Happy talk, keep talkin’ happy talk
Talk about things you’d like to do”

10 word description: “Discover a lively world where everybody is happy”. Game Center.

That’s not a happy street, that’s a dodgy looking animal in a field

10 word review: ‘Happy Street’? It’s more like ‘IAP-y Street’. Looks pretty, though.

Sometimes, I wish I could walk around with a bloody great question mark over my head

You will like this if you enjoy: Snoopy’s Street Fair, all the other cute looking IAP-or-wait-ages games (yes, I know they’re popular). Happy Street also has vague similarities with proper, non-IAP games such as Animal Crossing, but only vague ones.

The good news: Very pretty graphics. Initial progress is fairly quick without IAPS, as expected. They’ve stolen, I mean paid homage to, the bit in Pocket God where you tap the bird as it flies overhead to make it “poop” on people below – ha ha, how we laughed. Again.

If your bird misses with its poop, people can still slip over in the big piles of bird shit. And there was I, thinking video games are no longer fun

The bad news: Once you start thinking you might be enjoying the game, progress starts to slow right down unless you’re happy (ha ha, happy!) throwing real money at it. Apart from that, which should ruin it for anyone who isn’t completely stupid, it crashes a lot. Tapping to select characters and items is frequently inaccurate – tip: don’t plant the apple tree next to the bus-stop. Gameplay, and I use the word very loosely, involves tapping an icon then either waiting to tap it again or paying real money to tap it immediately. This is not a ‘game’ as it presents no challenge and requires virtually no skill beyond the ability to tap icons and wait.

Go on, spend your money to make some cartoon characters in a video game happy, you know it makes sense

Arcadelife verdict: This would be a reasonably acceptable way to pass the time if it wasn’t bogged down with IAPs and if it included a bit of actual gameplay instead of just tapping icons above shops and waiting. As it is, if you get this and allow small children to play it (not a good idea, although I can’t see who else would be interested) be prepared for a lot of whining.

Arcadelife rating

Visuals – 9/10
Audio – 7/10
Controls – 6/10
Content – 5/10
Fun – 2/10
Final rating – 58/100

Rating categories explained here.

Version reviewed by Arcadelife is 1.0.3

Godzilab Games website link

Arcadelife played and reviewed this game on:
4th gen iPod Touch (iOS 5.1.1)
iPad (iOS 5.1.1)