Plants vs Zombies 2 - Review / Rant

[Lloren]

Anyone else out there play PvZ2 yet? (out on iOS devices only).

It's free but there are lots of ads to try to get you to buy in-game upgrades. EA being greedy? A first? /snicker

I loved the first series and this one has brought some interesting aspects to the gameplay. It's a bit repetitious, but it's addicting enough so far to keep me up late at night.

 

[ewoksrule]

Anyone else out there play PvZ2 yet? (out on iOS devices only).

It's free but there are lots of ads to try to get you to buy in-game upgrades. EA being greedy? A first? /snicker

I loved the first series and this one has brought some interesting aspects to the gameplay. It's a bit repetitious, but it's addicting enough so far to keep me up late at night.

I have been way addicted to it so far. Lost quite a few hours of sleep.

 

[Tek7@Work]

My twin powers of gaming ADD and frugality form an (up-to-now) impenetrable shield to protect me from making in-app purchases, so I'll likely play the game right up until the point where an artificial difficulty spike demands the purchase of power-ups, assuming I don't get bored with the gameplay first. That's been my approach to all free-to-play games so far. (Side note: I dropped Candy Crush Saga around level 20 and just went back to Zookeeper Battle for occasional match-3 action.)

I know others take a different approach to F2P and I'm not saying my way is "the best way;" I just wanted to explain how I approach F2P as a preface of my own mini-review of the game:

It's fun! It's free! And even the power-ups stay true to the character and humor of the game.

Again, I don't see ever spending a dime on this game when my backlog (which includes games I've already paid for) is already a mile long and I would have much rather they simply sold the full game for $0.99 or $1.99 then tack on level packs as DLC at the same price later on (like Where's My Water?), but the purpose of a business is to make money and Candy Crush Saga has set a (IMO) nasty precedent for generating large profits from exploitative casual mobile game design.

EDIT: I'm not suggesting King (makers of Candy Crush Saga) was the first to do so, but rather the most successful in recent times.

And I'm not saying PvZ2 is exploitative (though considering it's published by EA, it would surprise me more if that wasn't the case); I haven't played enough of the game to say one way or the other. But the decision to make PvZ2 freemium is clearly a business decision (for better or worse; you decide which you think it is) rather than a game design decision.

But one nice thing about mobile is: If you don't like a game's monetization model, you can find 100 games like it (though likely not with the charm and polish of PvZ) on the App Store or Google Play that are $0.99 or $1.99 with cheap or free additional content.