ABANDONED: Plants vs. Zombies 2

[kjorteo]

YouTube threw some "Is it possible to clear X in Plants vs. Zombies without doing Y?" videos in my related sidebar, which I watched out of curiosity. That kind of got me into a "Hey I remember playing PvZ, I really enjoyed it" kind of mood, and I considered replaying it. But then I remembered, oh, right, there's a sequel I never tried! If I'm going to get back into that franchise, maybe it'd be a better idea to do the new stuff.

Spoilers: It was not a better idea.

Plants vs. Zombies 2 is, on the surface, Plants vs. Zombies but more. More Plants! More Zombies! Even more vs., probably! In theory, this should be fantastic, and exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately, as you probably already know, EA.

By which I mean, PvZ2 is literally what you would expect if you take PvZ1 and make it aggressively Free to Play. The difficulty is cranked to the point where it almost doesn't seem possible to clear a stage just by planting plants and letting them take care of it anymore, and I'm still in the first zone, but oh hey that's fine did you know that you the player basically get Gil Toss? 950 coins at any time to just manually Fruit Ninja away as many zombies as you can hit in five seconds. Good news is that it's not like you really had anything better to do with those coins, since all the new plants and seeds and level-ups (plants have levels now) instead take other freemium currencies like Gems and/or just enter your credit card number right here and cut the middleman. Get seedlings that sprout in 5-10 hours for miniscule rewards (usually more coins or something like that) but of course you can pay to make them sprout faster. Daily missions, they're impossible but you can try again if you watch an ad first. Etc.

This game is whalebait, is what I'm saying.

I did and do still like PvZ1, which is saying something because I normally detest Tower Defense as a genre so strongly that I used to have it blacklisted when going through my Steam Discovery Queue. PvZ1 is charming enough that even I enjoyed it, despite that bias. PvZ2, by contrast, is what happens when EA takes that franchise, kills it, then digs it back up from the grave and sends it shambling after me to mindlessly devour my wallet, like some sort of... of... hmm, if only we had a clever simile here.

I try to stay positive in my game reviews because there's more enough AVGN/Zero Punctuation shit out there already, but I just... playing this just felt icky. I can't put a wholesome spin on such an unwholesome experience. I'm sorry.

Comments

[divinemusings]

Ugh, I hate this trend in game for all the add-ons and having to pay for things instead of earning them in game. Like, that's the whole point of playing a game: earning things. It's bad enough I'm paying $60 for console games sometimes, and then in order to get the BEST WEAPON EVER I have to pay for it? It's BS.

[penguinmayhem]

I feel like a literal dinosaur but wtf is whalebait?

[kjorteo]

In Free to Play games, gacha/lootbox games, etc., a "whale" is a term for the heavy spenders who are utterly hooked and keep pouring money in for the upgrades, rare drop pulls, etc. Think "Facebook moms who have legitimately dropped hundreds or thousands of dollars on Farmville" in the west.

"Whalebait" games are the kind of F2P freemium monetization model that is very shamelessly aimed at them--everything costs premium currency, everything has a day-long cooldown/recharge period you can buy your way around, you have to hit those gacha pulls/lootboxes with ultra rares, etc. The kind of game that they know full well that people like you and I utterly hate, even to the point of it being counterproductive to sales in that we would have more readily spent the same amount of money on literally any other model. (I'd have been fine paying $20-40 or so upfront for a PvZ2 that played like an offline expansion of PvZ1, you know, like the good old "you buy a game and then you play the game" model we've all grown up with, but getting it as a free download and then spending $20-40 or so on crystals, seed packet upgrades, etc. just feels morally wrong somehow. I think the main difference is that the former model knows they already have your money if you're playing the game, so they can shut up and let you enjoy it, whereas the latter will be pushing that freemium currency at you like a cartoon 80s PSA drug dealer forever.) They know full well that hooking one whale pays for like a zillion people like us they lost along the way. We're not the target demographic, you see.

[kjorteo]

As I mused on below, the problem with the old model (if you're a greedy publisher) is that people buy your game once and have it forever and if you want more sales, you need to get more new people to buy it once, and all that sounds like hard work and that's no fun. What if we could offer subscription models and premium currency upgrades/gacha pulls/lootboxes/etc. and have people paying for our games forever? :D

[chalcedony_starlings]

^β“Cartoon 80s PSA drug dealer” is the best way to describe this.

[divinemusings]

Oh I totally get WHY they do it. I just hate it and it takes away from the experience.

[kjorteo]

Yeah, agreed. *Sigh* Oh, well.

[penguinmayhem]

And that shit works for their stock value regardless because it rakes in the massive cash off people who are addicted to collecting their card game waifus.

Or just people with not enough spare time and too much disposable income.

Or maybe it's because it's literally addictive and also gambling and should be regulated and taxed ffs.

[swordianmaster]

Think "Facebook moms who have legitimately dropped hundreds or thousands of dollars on Farmville" in the west.

Close, but no cigar.

Think "privileged oil baron in Dubai/1%er in Singapore who absolutely has no sense of self-worth that isn't tied to a ridiculously enormous epeen".

Thousands is mid-tier. To be properly viewed as a "whale" you're looking at five digits or more. Hundreds a month.

[swordianmaster]

Seriously; the term "whale" literally came from casino argot so it's not like anyone anywhere is SUBTLE about this shit.

[xaq_the_aereon]

I'd argue the "card game waifus" part there if it weren't completely and irrefutably accurate. (Case in point, the instant I saw an upcoming Yu-Gi-Oh pack had an archetype themed on and literally CALLED "Dragon Maids" my whole brain went "I don't care how crap the deck is, I'm getting it.")

[penguinmayhem]

See also: the juggernaught of otaku whalebait that is the Fate franchise. Please spend all your money on these skimpily-dressed clones of Saber.

[xaq_the_aereon]

Fair point, though to this day I have yet to find a better Saberclone than Agrias Oaks. (Iris from Princess Waltz was admittedly a close 2nd...)

[swordianmaster]

Nasu goes where the money is, man. Even from when he was first getting started, Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night both had awkward, shoehorned-in porn threads because "people won't buy visual novels unless they're eroge".

[penguinmayhem]

SUDDENLY DRAGON SEX

SUPPRESS ROA IN MY ASS

[swordianmaster]

Now, now, the dragon was a metaphor for sex, and that was only in the Studio DEEN anime.

i won't defend ciel's butt stuff, though

[penguinmayhem]

In fairness, the weird sex stuff wasn't even the wackiest crap in Tsukihime.

this chair this chair this chair this chair this chair this chair this chair this chair this chair this chair this chair

[swordianmaster]

Disappear.

[dorchadas]

The same thing happened to the mobile version of PvZ, which I played a ton on the bus and train in Japan. Until PopCap was bought by EA and the mobile version was infested with free to play mechanics that completely ruined the game.

Mobile gaming had such promise when I first got a smartphone.

[kjorteo]

I'm very fortunate, I guess, in that I have a version of PvZ1 back from some ancient Humble Mobile Bundile that's still blissfully untouched. You're not the first person to say that PvZ1 mobile is just like PvZ2 now, but mine... isn't. Thank goodness.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a really good mobile game, *polite cough*