Angry Birds Space arrives on Windows Phone 8 with strange Xbox Achievements

Windows Phone 8 gamers are in for a treat this week. Not only can they play the delightful WP7 game Cut the Rope, but they get a WP8 release too. Rovio’s Angry Birds Space is now available for Windows Phone 8. It looks like an excellent port, although at least one reader has found the Achievements to be decidely unusual.

I can has Achievements

Remember how every single one of Final Fantasy’s Achievements were secret for no discernible reason? (We quickly published an Achievement Guide to help out with that.) Well, our tipster found Angry Birds Space to be pretty much the same way, except not by design. Instead, each and every Achievement reads: “String: Placeholder” for both its title and description. As such, players affected by this glitch have no way of knowing what the Achievements actually are. They can still earn a few, but will probably need to check out the descriptions online somewhere for guidance. Check out the screenshot at right to see what the anomaly looks like.

The Achievement  weirdness does not affect every user, as our own Daniel Rubino can see them just fine. It seems to be either an installation error or a random WP8-specific bug of some type.

Update: It turns out that the developers simply forgot to translate the Achievements into German. With a phone set to English, the Achievements will display correctly.

Oh yes, the game

Here's how they should look

Angry Birds Space is the first true sequel to Rovio’s bird-flinging physics puzzler. Since the 150 included levels now take place in space, gravity no longer affects birds. They now fly in a straight line instead of downward, while pigs float off helplessly when struck. Some stages will have moons and other objects with their own gravity though, altering the dynamics of their puzzles. Two new bird types round out the list of improvements.

Angry Birds Space costs just 99 cents and there is a free trial. WP 8 owners, get it here on the Windows Phone Store.

Thanks to Mark Tepper for the Achievement screenshots!