Genre: Tower Defense
ESRB: N/A (I'd say it's an E10+ for cartoony zombie dismemberment)
Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 24/8
Developer: PopCap Games
I can handle free-to-play games. I really can. I still play Avengers Alliance on Facebook and a new game called Ascend on XBLA. But this particular free-to-play game makes it really hard for me to see it as an actual attempt at making a sequel rather than the cheap, dirty cash-grab that it is. I'm not going to be particularly verbose this week. I'll cut to the chase.
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| Please spend money to NOT play our game! |
The original Plants Vs. Zombies didn't really have a story, so neither does this one. But it does try a familiar sequel treatment by having the player do the same thing as last time but in different time periods. Ultimately this means that different zones have different zombies to fight rather than different zones being more oriented around different sets of plants. So I'll give it a good grade for the effort there.
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| Play the same level again? Hooray! |
A similar lack of effort went into the gameplay. While the story and setting are accomplished by minimalist design choices- which works for both this game and the last one- the gameplay was what kept the game interesting before. Here, it's a number of things taken away without much added. The newest additions are plant food and super powers. The first is accumulated off of random zombies and can be used on an individual plant to make it briefly ultra-powerful. Visually and tactically satisfying at times, but when and how much plant food you have don't make it feel like a fully balanced part of the game. The super powers are used simply by spending coins, which can either be farmed or bought with real world cash. Basically, both are ways to cheat at the game but at least the plant food is rationed off in a way that seems custom tailored to the difficulty of a given level.
Other than being able to repeat levels to earn stars (which only serve to prevent you from playing the rest of the game) and a new key system which keeps you from new upgrades and tantalizing you into spending real world money, there's nothing else new. With a game like Plants Vs. Zombies, I can see how little needs to be added on to improve it. But this is definitely getting into the territory of feeling like a weird spin-off rather than an official sequel.
There aren't many new plants and many old plants are completely gone AND a shocking number of favorite plants from the first game can only be acquired with real life money (Ex: Snow Pea, Jalapeno, Imitater). The few new plants aren't all gems either. Bonk Choy and Snap Dragon don't seem useful most of the time. And the Lightning Reed seems to completely replace the Bloomerang. Plants can no longer be upgraded (for example, the Twinflower is now its own individual plant) which allows for more variety in your arsenal, but that variety is generally only needed because certain unique zombies for a zone require a unique plant from that zone to beat (like the Spring Bean, which is ONLY useful on the pirate levels). The challenge mode maps in the previous game let you change out plants as you got further in, so you could use regular Sunflowers at first and then equip Twinflowers later. But now challenge mode has frustrating random plant selection and less depth because there's less need to switch plants around.
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| How can I live without Imitater and Snow Pea? Wahhhh! |
Conclusion:
Just some more Plants Vs. Zombies levels packaged as a free-to-play game. I bought a bundle of items for eight bucks, I think, because I feel it's good to spend money on a game if one plays that game a lot. Doing some research on my phone, I found that the original game only costs $1 on the App Store. If you haven't played this franchise before, do yourself a HUGE favor and just play that one.
