Plants Vs. Zombies Catch-All

garion333 wrote:
kilanash wrote:

I'm waiting for the demo.

While being a closet pop cap games whore and the video was funny, I'm not so sure about the concept after looking at the screenshots.

I sucked at Pixeljunk Monsters and it frustrated me so I'm rather uncommitted on the Tower Defense genre.

Pixeljunk Monsters isn't the easiest game on earth (especially since you're hampered by movement speed). I would expect a PopCap game to be a bit more friendly (so says the person stuck on level 5 of Heavy Weapons Deluxe).

Have you played Zuma?

Demo's out now. Someone report!

TheCounselor wrote:
garion333 wrote:
kilanash wrote:

I'm waiting for the demo.

While being a closet pop cap games whore and the video was funny, I'm not so sure about the concept after looking at the screenshots.

I sucked at Pixeljunk Monsters and it frustrated me so I'm rather uncommitted on the Tower Defense genre.

Pixeljunk Monsters isn't the easiest game on earth (especially since you're hampered by movement speed). I would expect a PopCap game to be a bit more friendly (so says the person stuck on level 5 of Heavy Weapons Deluxe).

Have you played Zuma?

Yeah, but in PJM it felt like you had to fight the controls a bit. I like PJM, but when compared to other tower defense games, I usually found myself getting frustrated at my little guy running around and his inability to be everywhere at once. That's not true of a mouse-based tower defense game (at least one's I played).

I never once felt that Zuma's difficulty was because of controls. It just got way too fast, but not impossible.

Anyway, I just played through the trial demo. Really enjoyed it. Lookin forward to tomorrow. (Btw, you choose at the beginning of each level which cards you want to use, once you've unlocked that card. It keeps things simple and allows you to tailor the gameplay to your style a bit.)

Harvest: Massive Encounter is the most fun I've had on a tower defense game. Not sure if I'm willing to buy another, but the music video is so DAMN CATCHY! If the game has music like that in game, I'll have to get it.

garion333 wrote:

Yeah, but in PJM it felt like you had to fight the controls a bit. I like PJM, but when compared to other tower defense games, I usually found myself getting frustrated at my little guy running around and his inability to be everywhere at once. That's not true of a mouse-based tower defense game (at least one's I played).

I never once felt that Zuma's difficulty was because of controls. It just got way too fast, but not impossible.

Anyway, I just played through the trial demo. Really enjoyed it. Lookin forward to tomorrow. (Btw, you choose at the beginning of each level which cards you want to use, once you've unlocked that card. It keeps things simple and allows you to tailor the gameplay to your style a bit.)

You make some good points about PJM.

jonnypolite wrote:

Demo's out now. Someone report!

I'm playing a few rounds at the moment. I'm not that familiar with tower defense games so forgive me if this info is obvious.

- At the start of each round, you are given a bit of time to prepare. You know it's time to fight when the zombie announce themselves.

- In order to plant seeds, you need to collect sun power. Basically, these mini-sun icons drop from the sky and you have to collect them. Each plant has its own specific amount of sun power needed to plant their seeds. The Pea Shooter needs 100 points of sun power and each individual sun is 25 points. You have to wait for them to drop until you unlock the next plant. The Sunflower, a.k.a. the one singing in the video, produces sun power on her own and you plant them to gain it more frequently.

- You can plants seeds throughout the entire round. Eventually, you can dig up ones that are planted to make room for others.

- The music is nice.

- The zombies are hilarious.

I'm enjoying it so far. I'll see how far the demo takes me and then comment again.

Unfortunately the demo ends right when things begin to get interesting, but there didn't seem to be much in the way of strategy from the bit that I saw. The problem is that the zombies come straight across in parallel paths, like swiming lanes, and the plants are only able to fire directly down one lane. I was hoping that the wallnut would enable you to guide a zombie into an adjacent lane, but instead they just munch on the barrier. Since there doesn't seem to be a way to guess which type of zombie will come down which lane ahead of time, you can't plan ahead and customize each lane for each threat profile, so you end up with indentical defenses in all of the lanes. I do hope that the expanded set of zombies and plants helps to mitigate this, but from the small taste the demo gave me, the gameplay didn't really seem to hold up to the wonderful aesthetics.

Yeah, the game is straightforward. There are only five lanes and all of the zombies in the demo walked in one lane. I had the same strategy every round because the zombies didn't do anything different. But I'm sure there is a wider variety of zombies later in the game that will make it more interesting. The demo is pretty much a tutorial.

Shea wrote:

Since there doesn't seem to be a way to guess which type of zombie will come down which lane ahead of time, you can't plan ahead and customize each lane for each threat profile, so you end up with indentical defenses in all of the lanes.

I started hording sun power and didn't plant additional seeds until I saw what was coming. But like you said, it didn't matter because eventually every lane had the same plants.

If the demo is any indication, I'm doomed.

Shea wrote:

I was hoping that the wallnut would enable you to guide a zombie into an adjacent lane, but instead they just munch on the barrier.

Based on something I read, garlic causes zombies to change lanes. I imagine there might be some sort of garlic-liking zombie that makes it less of a sure bet? Or more likely, some zombie that occasionally switches lanes on its own.

Shea wrote:

The problem is that the zombies come straight across in parallel paths, like swiming lanes, and the plants are only able to fire directly down one lane.

I remember reading somewhere that you'll get at least one plant that can fire in all directions.

I got to go Zombie Bowling right before the demo ended. In it the zombies come across the screen from the right (as they do) and you roll rocks at them. When you hit the zombies the rocks roll off at an angle and hit other zombies. I'm emphasizing this because I would bet that certain things do more than just come straight at you. Meaning certain weapons may do more than just shoot straight out.* Perhaps.

*The cherry bombs do have an area of effect.

Edit: Beat me to it, Hacienda. Bugger.

The demo ended for me right as I finished a level and got the zombie-eating plant. In the later stages you get to pick which plants you want to use in each level, and the grid of spaces for available plants was something along the lines of 7x8.

Ok, I played the demo too, and I think they got my $10. The help screen made me crack up.

More tomorrow here and everywhere, but trust me -- there are WAY more plant variations and zombies than you can shake a legbone at. Lane switching, walnut jumping, elvis, etc.

Unlike other Popcap games, I think I'll be playing this one with the sound on - even if I'm listening to podcasts. The music and sound effects are really good, whereas in Peggle they give me mad wahjah.

Like most Popcap productions, this game looks to be best played while listening to a podcast.

I was very surprised at the 92% score given to it by PC Gamer though. Guess it's their next Peggle.

Oh, this is far better than anything I had imagined it to be.

Lucky for my employer that the demo has a time limit, otherwise I suspect my "try it out during lunchtime" would have lasted all afternoon.

Make sure to make your Zombatar!

I love the style Popcap has taken with the advertising campaign. I caught my wife singing "there's butter on my head..." today after showing her the music video.

For ten bucks this is an amazing game. I listened to the podcast where they were talking about and about how Popcap said they anticipated about 50 hours of gameplay before you got to see everything, and I believe it. There are a lot of ways you can create defenses just using the seven plants that I saw in the demo.

And for $9.99? I've bought games for $50.00 that couldn't keep me interested info thirty minutes. This is a steal!

Trial ran out right in the middle of a level? Bah.

Dramatic Marlin wrote:

Make sure to make your Zombatar!

I love the style Popcap has taken with the advertising campaign. I caught my wife singing "there's butter on my head..." today after showing her the music video.

Hadn't seen that. Too much (stupid) fun.

Its pretty simple now, but I can see it getting devilishly hard later on. In addition to the bowling mini-game, I made it to a mini-game where random plants roll along the top of the screen and you can plant them without having to save up sunlight. The plants available pile up, so if you need a cherry bomb or something, you have to plant the less useful plants and then dig them up with the shovel to make more room in the queue. I can see it getting pretty frenetic. The zombies have also started dropping money, I'm curious to see what we can buy with the cash. Popcap has reformulated crack cocaine yet again...

The big question is if my wife is going to get into it. She's not a self identified gamer, but she can get pretty hard core on casual games (she's fully cleared nearly all the levels in Peggle). Her first impression was, "that looks hard..."

Also kudos to Popcap for releasing a Mac client, even if I had to pay $17.95 instead of $10 on steam.

Totally sold on the demo, I wasn't sure if it could top the video, but it did. I love my $10 bite-sized games

I'm really looking forward to the zombie dolphins. That's a new one.

"There's a zombie on your lawn."

Bloons Tower Defense was my first entry into the whole tower defense genre. I had a great time with it while sitting in class, not paying attention to the teacher in college.

There are 3 of those now. Each one a real gem.

I worry about the replayability. I look that are different defense builds- you can choose what you want the loadout to be. I don't know if it'll capture my interest for all that long. Also, I don't have interest in the free popcap game. But since Pop is going to charge $20 and Steam is charging $10 for pre-order, I'll go ahead and do that-- $10 sounds like a chep enough investment.

Are there achievements? Because I'm so buying this if there are achievements.

Coldstream wrote:

Are there achievements? Because I'm so buying this if there are achievements.

New tag suggestion: Dr. Achievement Whore