Why I Hate… Angry Birds

Plus, the wildly uneven difficulty level ensures you never feel like you're improving. Periodically Rovio will chuck in the odd ludicrously easy level in an attempt to throw the player a bone, but that just makes you feel like you're being patronised.

But what annoys me most about Angry Birds is that it's consistently held up as a shining beacon of quality game design, apparently for no other reason than the fact that it's popular. This fact is wheeled out every time anyone tries to say something nice about it.

Just about the only quality you could reasonably attribute to Angry Birds is that somehow, despite everything, it compels people to play on. Rovio has blundered upon that secret formula, the magical tipping point that has you teetering on the brink of throwing your iWhatsit across the room but bringing you back from the edge every time.

That it's addictive is almost undoubtable. But then crystal meth is addictive, yet no-one's falling over themselves to garland it with Drug of the Year awards.

It's understandable that most iOS developers are looking to create the next Angry Birds. People have to put food on the table, and a franchise that permeates the mainstream consciousness to the extent the Prime Minister has declared himself a fan (really, if there's a better argument not to play a game than the fact that beady-eyed berk likes it, I've not seen one) is obviously a desirable target to aim for.

But it's impossible not to worry that it's going to inspire a whole generation of bedroom coders to simply try to copy the formula, creating an ill-advised metaphor of copycat games that have a contemptuous attitude towards their players, keeping them just frustrated enough not to switch off and play something else instead.

I'd much rather developers were looking to make the new Trainyard, the new Drop 7, the new Solipskier - though Tiny Wings creator Andreas Illiger is kind of already there with that last one - rather than face an impossibly bleak future of Angry Birds clones.

Let's have games that reward and respect their users without cynically trying to squeeze more money out of them. Games that can stand up to repeat plays without the crutch of sporadically released copy-pasted extra stages masquerading as fresh 'themed' content. Games that don't actively endeavour to prevent half their players from reaching the end.

Oh yes. If you're struggling to beat a stage on Angry Birds, you can always - for a small fee, of course - resort to cheating.

Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka spoke proudly at GDC of the fact that 40 per cent of Angry Birds players had purchased the Mighty Eagle feature. This is essentially a smart bomb that instantly clears the level you're stuck on. Vesterbacka said he hoped to increase that total to 50 per cent.

In summary: a game-maker wants his game to be so frustrating that half its users are forced to pay for a cheat code so they can progress. The prosecution rests. If you're playing Angry Birds right now - and the law of averages suggests you probably are, because you're 1500 words in and starting to flag and ooh look they've just released those new Rio levels - then please, please stop.

Go outside. Phone your parents. Wash the car. Kick the dog. Do something, anything other than playing this stupid, miserable, cynical game which has somehow managed to enslave you and the rest of the inhabitants of Planet Apple. You might just thank me for it later.