5punk

It's only out on 'mobile devices' at the moment, which I've found to mean Apple stuff only, as I can't find it for Android, but I downloaded it onto my iPad and had a go anyway. PC version will follow, I'll play it there too if it's on Steam (it's a collection OCD thing), but I doubt there'll be a lot of difference.

The first thing that struck me is that it's very much more of the same. The graphical style is a little more hand drawn rather than cartoon - only barely noticeable - and the music is a little more 'professional' (by which I mean there are more instruments used), but the tutorial is identical to the original game. That's not a bad thing, the premise is a great one and I've played something like a hundred hours of it. The differences are predictable in some cases (the good ones), and not so much in others (unless you're aware that EA are publishing it, and that EA have sworn to monetise the shit out of everything they sell).

So lets start with the familiar goodness. You drop plants down to stop zombies getting into your house and eating your brains. You do this by collecting sun to buy more plants. There are new plants, new zombies, new locations. That's all expected, and they're all well and good. I should qualify what I'm writing at this point by saying I've only played the first dozen or so levels, all of which have been in Egypt. The premise is nice, it's no better or worse than the original for it, and that's a pretty good compliment.

Next up is the stuff I'm suspicious of. You get all manner of power ups in PvZ2. I don't like power ups, because they're an excuse to sell them to chumps for real money. You get a stack of Plant Food, which supes up one plant for a few seconds. The effect varies by plant, and are quite interesting, and they drop when you kill certain zombies. They add another layer of complexity I don't think the game needs, but they pretty much act as an 'oh shit' button. So that's not too bad. Then there are the power ups, of which there are three. They wipe out large swathes of zombies with finger movements - one snips their heads off, one picks them up and chucks them, one zaps them with a continuous lightning bolt. They're as overpowered as they sound, and you use them by paying for them with in-game gold. Ah, now that sounds familiar - paying for game-affecting, one-shot buffs. Lets keep that in mind.

The rest of the changes look to be outside the game itself. This time you have a few branched progress lines, side-quests in which you can earn new plants. You have to unlock those with keys found in game though. After the first one, for reasons that aren't explained, you need to use more than one key to unlock them. Of course if you don't have enough, you can unlock them with real cashmoney. Then there's the shop. If you remember from the original, you could use your gold to buy new plants, extra slots, other useful stuff. You can do that here, except you use real cashmoney again.

So by way of a conclusion, at this stage, it's more PvZ fun, but with the spectre of monetisation hanging over it. What will make or break it is whether you have to pump cash into it to get anywhere, or whether the paid-for options are just a bit of fun as a few one-offs. I can live with buying a few bonus plants for the price I'd have paid if it was a normal release, but if I have to keep fronting up for power-ups to beat the levels then I just won't be playing it.

Eeh. Seems about half a dozen of the plants can only be bought with real cashmoney; including the Snow Pea, Squash, Torchwood, Jalapeno, and Imitater. Three of those I'd say were almost essential plants in the first game. That's balanced out a little by some of the new ones - the quick-punching Bonk Choy is a favourite of mine - but it's still bad. You could get all those plants for £13, which I would have probably paid for the game, but until I know that I won't be expected to keep shelling out for progress (which it's looking like I will in the form of buying keys) then I'm not spending a penny on it.

Another thing worth mentioning that I spotted: there don't appear to be any of the minigame modes. I might just not have unlocked them yet though.

I glad, sincerely, that you can rationalise spending money on F2P stuff if it's in line with what you'd pay if the game had a traditional payment model. I just can't do it. Take your example:

£13 up front and some levels require you to use certain plants - good game design.
Free but £13 (guaranteed max) to buy those required plants to progress - being taken for a ride.

See, I can see it sounds stupid but meh, I'm sure I'm not alone.

It's because it's duplicitous in nature. It's saying "look, our game's free! Except not really, we just let you think it is." And in this case that £13 isn't the end of it. There's a currency option that's £70. That smells like monetisation. But then why wouldn't they? Sports Interactive said today that they made more money from selling in-game cash, a self described cheat mode, than any other revenue from Football Manager Classic. As much as it's easiest to blame the company, you've really got to ask yourselves if it isn't the fools who buy it who are at fault. The bubble will burst though, once the general population of casual gamers learns they're being taken for a ride.

Problem is, a quid here and there is pretty innocuous, I don't think people even register it most of the time, but saying that, having to pay to progress is fucking horrible and I hate it, but I don't mind paying to unlock the rest of a game, or remove ads, but I can't quite place how it's different.

I've heard that candy crush apparently pulls in $600,000 a day, which is why it's such an effective model, especially with the RNG and brick wall style difficulty curves.

Well I've not encountered any horrific difficulty spikes so far, and there's no more RNG than the first game. The only genuine obstacle is the slight grind to unlock enough stars to move onto the next level, or enough keys to get the bonus tracks (with alternative game modes and new plants).

Ah! On starting to replay the levels for more stars I've found that it puts restrictions on you on subsequent plays. Each level has a number of stars to be earned, and each star has a different restriction. I've actually found that to be quite good fun - don't let the zombies past a certain point, don't use more than 12 plants, or spend more than 1200 sun. Adds a nice tactical element. It's the first pleasant surprise I've had, and means that rather than having to grind out the levels, you're playing bonus variations.