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In-app payments have claimed another victim with PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies 2, the long-awaited follow-up to one of the most popular mobile tower defence games in recent years.
Released today, the game takes the winning formula of the original -- place a variety of battle-ready plants in a garden to defeat hordes of resourceful undead corpses -- and blends it with various new game modes, varieties of plants, backdrops and required strategies.
But unlike the original, much of the game's content, levels and plants are locked behind paywalls of cash, or considerable amounts of grinding. You can unlock content all at once, but that will cost you £2.99 per "world" (or level collection), £1.99 per plant type, a couple of quid for various inventory upgrades, £1.49 to unlock certain stages within each world... You get the idea.
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Although the majority of the game can, with enough hours, be unlocked for free, is it fun to try and do so? The answer is no, I feel. It's similar to how a car is technically not needed if you have legs, but when faced with walking 1,000 miles you have to consider whether sticking to just your feet is going to be a pleasant experience.
On the positive, PopCap (now [link url="https://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-07/13/ea-acquires-popcap"]owned by EA[/link]) has crafted and polished a slick title underneath its business model. The charm of watching peapods, melon canons and cherry bombs blast zombies limb-from-pelvis is enhanced greatly by the delightful presentation and charming soundtrack. Many new plants are present, such as boomerang plants and coconut canons, and new game modes break up some (and only some) of the potential monotony and frustration of playing levels over and over in order to grant access to other plants.
Also, the game is free. It costs nothing to jump in and experiment. This is the argument for all free-to-play games: it breaks down the barrier to entry, offering a no-cost gaming experience to those with little disposable income, or instant gratification from unlocking everything possible for those that do.
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[b][i]Plants vs. Zombies 2[/i]: it's about (im)balance[/b]
[i]Plants vs. Zombies 2[/i] has got the balance here wrong though. Take the first world, for example. You start with a basic set of plants to beat levels, which you can do reasonably easily.
[Quote"]Although the majority of the game can, with enough hours, be unlocked for free, is it fun to try and do so?[/pullquote]
But to get to the next world you'll need more "stars" to unlock it that you can't earn in one playthrough, so a paywall appears. If you don't want to pay, you can go back and replay stages with differing game modes, and grind through them with the same set of plants over and over. This gets really boring. The temptation is to buy an extra plant or two to make the grinding a bit more fun, but then why not just buy your way into the next stage?
Then there's the "power-ups" mechanic. Unlike the original,
PvZ 2 allows you to effectively invoke the hand of god, which more accurately is literally your own hand (thanks, touchscreens!). There are three powerful options available for moments of panic, which allow you to essentially annihilate all on-screen zombies in a literal pinch. Each use has a cost attached: initially covered by coins earned by playing the game, but once they run out -- you guessed it -- by coins purchased with in-app payments.
This wouldn't be so bad if many of the more challenging levels didn't feel damn-near impossible to complete without using them, and completion is almost essential if you're trying to unlock stars to progress to a new world.
If this reads like a bucket of bitterness being poured into your eyes, I understand. Have a tissue. But it's bitterness forged from a lack of choice. I have no option to pay a price for the game upfront to progress through the game without seeing "The fiery Jalepeno. 30 percent off!" adverts. Instead, it's either pay, pay again, then pay once more, or grind through levels over and over, ever-tempted to use power-ups for easy completion of levels that genuinely feel tuned to make them feel essential.
I feared this. Ever since I heard EA had opted to release
PvZ 2 under the free-to-play banner, I cringed with worry.
As much as I appreciate the developers' motives to allow for easy access to the game, it's a game that's of limited enjoyment because of the roadblocks you'll run into.
So many of the game's levels are fun; the plants themselves are hallmarks of casual gaming brilliance. If it were possible to pay upfront to simply remove roadblocks between levels and plants, this game would be everything every fan of the original would want.
But -- and honestly, it pains me to say this as a fan of the original -- this is not the game fans of the original wanted. It smacks of fun planted in a rotting garden.
My advice is just pay once: pay to unlock the second world when you run into it. It'll cost you £2.99, which would be good price for the game anyway, and will allow you to unlock a few extra plants to go back and use in the previous world. But the fact that gaming tips are now reduced to financial advice is disappointing, which is the adjective I'll leave here to describe the game itself.
Plants vs. Zombies 2 is out now as a universal iOS-exclusive app.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
