Game:

Plants vs. Zombies (2009)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 1:25:21

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1

Phew...I did not expect this one to be so ridiculously long! Well, since we had to redo Adventure Mode up to 4-10 in order to show off the Zombie Yeti, I decided to go for some of the achievements along the way. Most of the ones here involve completing a level of a certain type without using a certain kind of plant, but we also have to end a level with a certain amount of sun (which actually turned out to be a *lot* easier than I had expected). Beyond that, we look at the last couple upgrade plants, the rest of the almanac, the different Zen Gardens, the Tree of Wisdom, and the Zombatar creator.

With that, Plants vs. Zombies is finished, or at least as finished as it will likely ever be. I like this game, but I'm not sure that it made a very good or entertaining Let's Play. Also, I was getting pretty burned out on it starting around the time we were finishing up the minigames, and that became a good deal worse in this final episode because of all the retreading for the achievements. (Granted, that could have been cut down by a good 19 levels had I not forgotten about the nighttime achievement, but eh, everyone makes mistakes.) I like that there are a good variety of different plant types, zombie types, and stage environments for different gimmicks and play styles. I also like the different game modes, which add additional diversity to the gameplay. And the design is kind of cute anyway, and interesting new take on tower defense.

I didn't like everything, though...I feel like a lot of the gimmick levels have too much potential for RNG screw, which could be the case for any of the conveyor belt and Vasebreaker stages as well as a few other minigames (Portal Combat and its tendency to warp zombies into the back of your lawn...), but Column Like You See 'Em deserves special mention: no matter how good you think you are at the game, if you get fewer than three Melon-Pults, you're pretty much hosed. And speaking of minigames, I don't know who designed Bobsled Bonanza and Pogo Party and thought they were fun either. 5-5 is a dumb, pointless level; it not only sticks out like a sore thumb due to being the only X-5 level that isn't based on a minigame (or vice versa?) and the only one that doesn't change up the gameplay for variety (admittedly, 3-5 also doesn't do much for this, and I'm not a huge fan of that one either), but even the game itself says that it will be annoying. I'm tempted to throw world 4 in its entirety in there as well, but that might just be complaining on my part. A few of the zombie types also seem to have too specific a gimmick (balloon zombies) or are too annoying to fight without plants specifically designed to mess them up (football and pogo zombies), and then there is the Gargantuar, which is just blatantly overpowered compared to almost everything else. Its toughness and ability to insta-kill plants easily are bad enough, but adding the Imp into the equation kind of takes it beyond reason (especially since the little twerps are tougher than they look...why is it that in I, Zombie, they die in three hits, but in the main game, they can take two watermelons to the face and keep going?). Finally, the shop was not balanced very well; unless you specifically go out of your way to grind a lot of money early, by the time you can afford most of the stuff in it, there's not much of the game left to play unless you're doing Survival Endless mode, for which it (annoyingly) seems primarily designed. It also causes a bit of an unstable equilibrium, where you can't buy much to help if you're having trouble beating the levels because you need to beat levels and/or get upgrades in order to get more money in the first place. Finally, Crazy Dave's random plant thing is stupid and adds nothing to the game. It forces pointless handicaps on you, which are made even more pointless because you can keep resetting the game until you get something decent. Sure, he doesn't seem to give you plants that are completely unusable or useless (he won't give you a Lily Pad outside of a pool level or a Coffee Bean in a night level, for instance), but he can and will give you plants that there would be no reason to use in that context (such as a Cactus in a stage with no balloon zombies, regular Peashooters on the roof, or multiple single-use plants at once).

Anyway, though, I'm still at least somewhat glad I did this. It might have been tiresome, but it was an interesting departure from the usual projects. Plants vs. Zombies is a fun game, and it's readily available on Steam or GOG.com.

See you next game!

- imamelia, a.k.a. TheMartianGeek

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