Frenchy Bird (Wii U) Review

In The Gay Truth, Friedrich Nietzche touches upon the subject referred to by him as "Das Schwerste Gewicht" or, in English, the heaviest burden. What does he mean by that? It is basically his way of seeing the existence of a circle of eternal rebirth, and he explains in this text that if a demon appeared in front of someone in their saddest and loneliest moment and told them that they would have to relive their life forever and ever for all eternity, that truth would be the most horrible curse that person could ever have bestowed upon them. Playing Frenchy Bird gives some insight into exactly why this is such a bad curse, because if it is true that would mean that people would have to play this again and again for all eternity.

Thinking about it, this piece of theorem even applies to the poor bird inside this game. Caught up in a birdcage for all eternity and having to fly through France for all eternity until crashing into a streetlight in this horrible game that is Frenchy Bird.

Exactly what is it that makes Frenchy Bird into such a bad title? First of all, some blame is to be put on its source of inspiration, Flappy Bird. Flappy Bird is a game designed most likely deliberately to be a terrible experience. However, the developer of Frenchy Bird does not seem to have understood that when designing its own take on the concept, it should have sincerely tried to take a horrible concept and turn it into something good. It is so painful to see so much work being put into trying to turn a deliberately crappy game into a good one as it is close to impossible.

Frenchy Bird looks good on the surface and the music is very well made, but there are some issues with the concept that make it almost painful. The game takes place in France, so instead of pipes there are streetlights as obstacles… even coming from the top down. It is tragically humoristic to see streetlights hanging down from the empty sky, defying all logic, reason and, most comically, gravity. Another issue is how the music works. Frenchy Bird is designed on a concept that demands a rhythm be developed to easily get through the obstacles, yet this becomes very problematic when the music has some weird rhythm changing throughout, thus putting the player off their own internal beat and meaning that to play the game in the best possible way, the music must be turned off, but the music is one of the extremely few aspects of Frenchy Bird that could ever in any reality be seen as enjoyable.

The other aspect, and the only saving grace and reason to even consider getting Frenchy Bird, is the Miiverse stamps unlocked. The stamps are some of the best looking ones released to date. Sadly, to unlock them it is not only necessary to play Frenchy Bird but to learn to play it well, which likely means spending hours with this poor excuse for a game - having to experience the curse of "Das Schwerste Gewicht" with the poor bird over and over (and over) again to finally get the rewards.

Frenchy Bird is a title that should be avoided at any price, unless a collector of Miiverse stamps, and if so, it is recommended for such gamers to hit their head hard so they get amnesia whenever they read about Frenchy Bird to forget that there ever were any stamps in the game to begin with. This is how bad this game is…