Quick Look: Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time

oh man i love quick looked

I thought this was supposed to be like a polygonol action game?

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I started watching. I wonder if it's the PC version that'll be that way. If that is the case, it seems that the PC version will be the...best deal *winks at camera*.

I've played this the last two days, pretty fun. Some people are raging over F2P. It seems beatable without paying a dime. But I probably won't play it for more than 20 hours, wherever that leaves me.

Those plants are ROTTEN!

Drives me crazy not planting those plants.

I've only played it a bit since it launched, so this was the first time I got a good look at all the F2P hooks embedded in the game. Some of it seems awfully grimy.

Still can't believe the sequel to Plants vs Zombies is a mobile game. The original was only for computers when it first came out. I guess times are a changing. Plus the whole EA thing. I must be getting old, I still prefer PC games over console games and console games over mobile games.

10 dollar "micro transactions"? 20? 100 dollars?????

A full version of the game shouldn't even cost 10 dollars... Who are the idiots who keep feeding this evil business model?

And when will this Free To Play trend finally end?

That's PvZ: Garden Warfare, or something. Coming out next year.

And people thought the subtitle "It's About Time" was a time travel pun. Nope! It's a pun about how time you need to spend grinding to progress!

Johnny Cash and Metallica, I support this.

Brad, the stars aren't hard to get and they change the levels.

Well... so much for looking forward to this game :(

Wow.

I try to avoid inflamed or overwrought rhetoric, but fuck EA.

Seriously. Goddamn.

Having a 100 dollar tier feels a little... exploitative. Yuck.

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Yeah, the variety in the new objectives when you revisit the levels is nice. Only being able to get one star per level isn't so nice, though.

This game looks insanely boring and deeply entrenched in poor free to play gimmicks. I honestly couldn't even finish the QuickLook which is a rarity.

I predict a news story later this year about yet another child racking up a huge credit card bill.

Not having played any version of PvZ, what have they added to the sequel? It comes across as a lazy moneygrabbing scheme so I would think it is just more characters and a redrawn play field, but hopefully I am wrong and there is some innovation?

There goes brad not knowing what he is talking about. Yes it is free to play and you can buy coins and other stuff, BUT JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING IN THE GAME IS UNLOCKED WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT.

Brad is bitching about paying for coins and I never once thought about paying for them, and I think they are pointless. I got enough keys to unlock all the doors earlier on in the first section and that will probably be true in the next section and never felt like I needed to pay for them. Brad is bitching about having to grid the levels to get stars when you can pay to go forward, but if you like the game than playing through the levels (which add challenges to get the stars) is not a bad thing.

Brad should realize that this is a great free to play game in the mobile marker because it DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO PAY FOR ANYTHING AND JUST BECAUSE THEY OFFER YOU TO BUY SOMETHING IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD OR HAVE TO.

Brad comes off as a ignorant person and should stop comparing mobile comes to consoles. Worst part is I'm really enjoying this game and I'm sad people might think this is bad.

This. Is. So. Boring! The levels are way more drawn out and less intense than in PvZ. Also, there is VERY little added to this game except for the F2P stuff, which is a huge shame.

why would they do this on an iPhone? Do they not have an iPad they could use for this? Wouldn't that make it easier for them to read the screen?

I've played a fair bit of PvZ original but I never considered it to be amazing or anything, just a very good casual game. This seems... not great?

What the hell are they doing.. not even on the PC? I had 40 hours on the original. Oh wait, its published by EA, fuck this garbage

Game doesn't have iCloud save support, so I'd have had to start over on the iPad (mainly been playing this on the bus on my phone). Getting a full 16x9 image out of the iPhone is also kind of nice for the QL.

Sick burn on Kaku!

Shout outs to the Kids in the Hall callback.

So....this game is a facebook game? I guess i'm okay with that as long as it doesn't seem impossible to beat without spending money. For the people who want a PC version, there probably willl be a facebook version of it in the near future.

Jeff would have dropped the 5 bucks to let us see the next time period but I don't blame Brad either. Also this will come to everything I am sure just like the first game did.

The orginal pvz had soul, this seems.... not so much.

ea claims another

Popcap employee spotted.

@mrlog:

I completely agree, Brad's so stuck on the anti-micro transaction train that it's frustrating to hear.

Wow... I was excited to show my daughter this quick look because she loves the original (we still play it together now). However, I won't bother, this "free to play" bullshit is just too much to explain.

I can't imagine the people who actually worked on the game enjoyed implementing the IAP stuff, but that's probably just my naive impression that Popcap doesn't do this kind of crap.

Is there a block transaction option?

My sister's step daughter loves P vs Z but she will probably try to charge 1000 x 99$ to my sister's phone.

Nope. Nope nope nope. You should be able to advance to the next "area" when you complete the first one. You shouldn't need to grind stars one at a time through FIFTEEN FUCKING "CHALLENGES" to move on.

Poor design, fail.

@contrarygravitas: Mandatory challenges for progress are a poor design decision (see Ryan's Inferno) no matter the game, but the guy has a point in saying that Brad might have misrepresented the game in this case.

Yeah, Brad totally fucking dismisses any games with micro-transactions before giving them a chance. It's really annoying because I feel like if he gave games like that a chance he might really enjoy one. Maybe even so much that he starts a daily feature where he plays one obsessively for the past few months.

To be honest, I don't mind replaying levels for stars if they are challenging.

I hope people realise that to get through that gate, you need 15 stars. You get about 7 stars going through the game once. So after doing the challenges in say the first 3 levels, you can access the next area. It's pirate themed.

Game's great.

I'll play this game for free. Had they charged for it without the micro transactions they could have gotten some money from me. Maybe it's better this way, not giving money to EA and all.

I fail to see how this game's star mechanic is any different than Super Mario 64.

The microtransaction outrage is really overblown.

BEST DEAL

I think Brad's opinion on micro transactions is valid. Even when free-to-play and microtransations are balanced "well" it's still a balancing between your time vs your money. It's kinda an uneasy feeling at best and nefarious at worst. It's still also relatively new in the grand scheme of things so it's still very susceptible to misuse. I think having a general distrust of microtransactions is more just being someone who doesn't have the expendable income to spend 10 dollars on playcoins.

Nooo they didn't go back and replay levels once the challenges were unlocked! Getting stars seriously isn't that bad.

You complete challenges Mario 64 style rather than just flat out replaying levels and grinding stars.

They found the only way to make Plants vs. Zombies more lame. Awful "micro" transactions. Terrible. Give me Peggle 2, please.

Wow, fuck Pop Cap. That is huge garbage.

The math on these deals is atrocious.

EDIT: Is this Pop Cap's fault? Or EA's?

RIP Popcap.

I would have paid 10-20$ for a legit PVZ sequel.

This microtransactioned to hell and back EA style bullshit? NO THANKS!

Mario 64 is up front about it: "Get x stars to reach the boss". The way PvZ2 doesn't tell you about the stars until after you beat the final level of the area reminds me of that F2P essay with the various exploitation tricks. The player thinks he just earned access to the next area so you take that away and ask him to pay money to get the reward.

This just seems the worst, sometimes I truly hate F2P.