Zombies has never been interesting enough to me to justify playing through it more than once this may just be me, however, as I will note at this juncture that my girlfriend has played through the original game several times on PC, iPhone and iPad, and I'm sure she's not alone in that. This is, of course, true, but… really? I don't know about you, dear reader - you could be a huge PvZ fan for all I know, and if so, more power to you - but wouldn't you rather play a continuous string of new levels rather than repeating the same ones over and over again? Plants vs. Why provide players with tools that, essentially, allow them to completely break the balance of the game? Struggling to complete a level? No problem! Don't worry about actually improving your skills, just whip out your credit card, buy some coins and invest in some more plant food and powerups! Don't mind us, we just designed the game this way you go ahead and break it… just make sure you pay for the privilege.Īpologists for the game have noted that there's no need to pay real money for the coins if you go back and replay earlier levels to grind for coins. More than anything, it's the message it sends that bugs me: I read it as PopCap having a lack of confidence in its own game.
#Plants vs zombies 2 online all plants plus
But those plus signs are, in effect, a form of passive nagging the option to, essentially, pay to cheat is always there. It could be worse, of course it could be like a social game and regularly pop up messages inviting you to pay now for "special offers" and, to PopCap's credit, never once are you "nagged" to pull out your credit card. By the time you're well into the game proper, though, there they are, just staring at you waiting for you to tap them and enjoy their bounty in exchange for a few of your hard-earned dollars. These plus signs aren't present in the game's tutorial, nor in the first couple of levels, lulling you into a false sense of security. Tap the latter and you can immediately use said coins to purchase a "charge" for the game's one brand-new mechanic: the ability to "power up" a plant for a few seconds, usually tipping the scales back in your favor. Tap the former and you can spend real money to purchase coins, which can also be acquired through play. One by your coin readout one by your plant food indicator. The game itself is reasonably solid for the most part, and doesn't rely on the more obnoxious tricks other free-to-play developers have in their arsenal - things like wait timers, slowly refilling energy bars and artificial difficulty spikes - and consequently feels reasonably well balanced. The game's monetization is neither overbearing nor obnoxious, and it is indeed possible to play through the entire campaign without having to pay a single cent. I will say that the apologetic but positive reviews for Plants vs. See the "machine gun" pea-shooter there? Pay enough money and you can make all of them do that.
Perhaps my worries were unfounded perhaps PopCap had indeed found that magic sweet spot for the free-to-play model perhaps this would be the game to finally convince me that free-to-play is actually as good for consumers as it is for publishers. Something didn't sit right with me about all this, so I downloaded the game and actually gave it a shot once it became available worldwide. At the same time, though, I noticed a curiously apologetic tone present in almost every review, blog post and tweet regarding the game - a sense of "Well, it's good, but." Zombies 2, though, particularly once reviews started emerging praising it as a solid sequel. I felt I may have been being a bit unfair to Plants vs. Zombies' publisher EA is one of the companies leading the charge in this direction, particularly on mobile.
I've seen too many games utterly ruin their balance and overall "fun factor" - there's a term that takes me back to the '90s publishing industry - by following the fashionable free-to-play model. Zombies 2 was announced as a free-to-play title, I made the argument Freemium Makes Good Games Suffer. You may recall that, shortly after Plants vs. This is largely thanks to it being mechanically almost identical, but we can't criticize it too much for that - it's pretty much what fans wanted. Zombies 2 is a reasonably decent game, particularly if you liked the first one. I'll say one thing up front before we get started on this: Plants vs.
0 kommentar(er)
