Angry Birds Rio Basic Tips

Angry Birds Rio, like its predecessors, is about one thing—slinging kamikaze birds into wooden or glass structures on the right side of the screen, using a realistic physics engine. The objective of the game is to either free your caged comrades, or kill some evil primates, who are in or on these structures. If you can break all the cages, or kill all the monkeys in a level, you get to move on to the next level. The real fun, however, comes with earning a 3 star score.

In premise, Angry Birds is a simple game, but the physics engine really makes it difficult to be good at it, especially if you don't know what it is you're supposed to be doing. IGN is here to break it down for you. If you're an Angry Birds vet, and you're just stuck on a level, skip the next section. If you're new to Angry Birds, however, continue reading about Bird Types.

Tips and Strategies

When you first enter a level, the first thing you should do is pinch-and-zoom so you can see the entire level. It helps to see everything before you start, so you can gauge how far you are from your target. This is also the only way to spot items that are hidden off-screen.

When you pull back your bird in the sling, take note of where it is in relation to the background. Using reference points will greatly increase your accuracy, if you need to try again.

Each bird you fire will leave a trail of dust behind them. Use this to help fine tune your next shot. For example, if you need to hit a spot in the structure that's slightly higher than where the last shot ended up, pull the next bird lower than where the trail starts.

Restart early and often. In order to get 3 stars in most of these levels, you have to be extremely accurate. If your execution on a particular shot isn't perfect, don't worry, just try again. Why wait until after firing the last bird to restart, when it only takes a few seconds to access the menu and restart the level?

Think like the developers. There's at least one wooden block, or glass plane that's the key to taking down the entire level. After a while, you should start noticing where these weak spots are.

Attack boxes of TNT and bounce pads when they're available. Again, think like the developers. They must have put those things in the game for a reason, right?

Wait until your last bird disappears before firing the next one. In general, waiting until everything in the level stops moving to take your next shot is smart, in case you need to take a different approach. If you hit your last bird though, you'll lose a great amount of velocity and power, basically wasting the shot.

Attack from above, when needed. Most of the time the weak spots are near the base of the structure, but in some instances, the weak spots can only be hit from above.