Plants Vs. Zombies Catch-All

Finally picked this up last night, after playing through the demo ages ago. I was going to get it direct from PopCap so that my wife could play it on her Macbook as well, despite it being half the price on Steam. However, when I entered my address in the checkout, PopCap changed the US$20 price to AU$30, which at the current exchange rate is about $US25! It's a great game, but that was just a bit too rich for my liking, so I grabbed it on Steam instead, and my wife is going to have to miss out.

It just doesn't make much sense to me that there could be such a disparity in pricing between buying direct and buying through Steam, and it also really bugs me when people are asked to pay more in the digital for exactly the bits, just because they're going to a different part of the interwebs.

pneuman wrote:

It just doesn't make much sense to me that there could be such a disparity in pricing between buying direct and buying through Steam, and it also really bugs me when people are asked to pay more in the digital for exactly the bits, just because they're going to a different part of the interwebs.

I think the price disparity comes from avoiding Steam's DRM. If you bought the Popcap version, you could have it installed on both machines and play on both of them (although this might violate the EULA). If you get the Steam version, you can install it on two machines, but only play it on one at a time.

Atras wrote:
pneuman wrote:

It just doesn't make much sense to me that there could be such a disparity in pricing between buying direct and buying through Steam, and it also really bugs me when people are asked to pay more in the digital for exactly the bits, just because they're going to a different part of the interwebs.

I think the price disparity comes from avoiding Steam's DRM. If you bought the Popcap version, you could have it installed on both machines and play on both of them (although this might violate the EULA). If you get the Steam version, you can install it on two machines, but only play it on one at a time.

Just run Steam in offline mode on the other machine...

If it's available in your region another alternative is to dodge SteamShenanigans™ and get it for $6.99 from BigFishGames - I've used them for BookWorm Adventures & Puzzle Quest and have had good luck with timely responses from their support team. I've had PvZ installed on three different systems (my main desktop PC, my laptop, and my media center PC) without headaches (or having to log in, be online, authenticate, wait a random number of seconds, etc.)

http://www.bigfishgames.com/download...

Puce Moose wrote:

If it's available in your region another alternative is to dodge SteamShenanigans™ and get it for $6.99 from BigFishGames - I've used them for BookWorm Adventures & Puzzle Quest and have had good luck with timely responses from their support team. I've had PvZ installed on three different systems (my main desktop PC, my laptop, and my media center PC) without headaches (or having to log in, be online, authenticate, wait a random number of seconds, etc.)

http://www.bigfishgames.com/download...

Nice, I'll keep them in mind for my next PopCap purchase!

Atras wrote:

I think the price disparity comes from avoiding Steam's DRM. If you bought the Popcap version, you could have it installed on both machines and play on both of them (although this might violate the EULA). If you get the Steam version, you can install it on two machines, but only play it on one at a time.

PopCap has its own DRM, though -- it limits you to a total of five installs, which is arguably more restrictive than Steam's. The PopCap site says that you can call up to get more reinstalls if required, but I don't know whether they just hand them out or if you have to have a good explanation to get one. The region-based pricing really boggles the mind, too.

merphle wrote:
Atras wrote:

If you get the Steam version, you can install it on two machines, but only play it on one at a time.

Just run Steam in offline mode on the other machine...

Shhhh!

pneuman wrote:

PopCap has its own DRM, though -- it limits you to a total of five installs, which is arguably more restrictive than Steam's.

Good point. I bought the game through Steam, myself.

Atras wrote:
pneuman wrote:

PopCap has its own DRM, though -- it limits you to a total of five installs, which is arguably more restrictive than Steam's.

Good point. I bought the game through Steam, myself.

Yeah, I'm happy to have it in Steam -- it's slightly more hassle (since I'm on a Linux box here, running under Wine, and while it does work it's just slower and a bit more effort than launching games directly) but it's the same game in the end. I dare say I wouldn't get away with a wife-denying Steam purchase of, say, Peggle Nights, though!

I told my wife that PvZ is coming to the 360. Her response was a loud 'woohoo!' followed by her saying that it's the perfect excuse she needed to start from scratch and build everything up to where she is right now on the PC.

Finally! I made it past that dang-blasted 'Invisi-ghoul' mini-game. I didn't have too much trouble with most of the other ones but I think I failed that one seven or eight times. Miserable dolphins.

On the tree of wisdom, is there a way to show hints that it's already shown you?

Is there a secret to finding the chocolate? Ol' stinky really raked in the bucks for me, but I've only found one piece of it.

Puce Moose wrote:

On the tree of wisdom, is there a way to show hints that it's already shown you?

Wait on that screen and it'll start repeating previous wisdoms after some time.

Chocolate is found in any game mode as a random drop. Also to get the most out of the chocolate feed one piece to Stinky and nine to glowing plants.

Most of the tips the Tree of Wisdom gives can either be found in the game's manual/readme or on Gamefaqs. I didn't get anything new out of the Tree of Wisdom. Although you still need to feed it for certain special codes to work.

I got my tree to 100 or 150 feet or whatever and I got the special message. But I can't remember what it is...

I'm very late to this party, but I like this game very much.

syndicatedragon wrote:

I'm very late to this party, but I like this game very much. :)

Back up your saves. I didn't know the game would eat save files, but it does and I just lost months of PvZ gaming. Ugh.

My 4 yr old is still totally in love with this game. It is fun.

Rise, zombies ... rise!

Finished Adventure mode last night. I just want to say that, at $10, PvZ is one of the best gaming values I've ever come across.

To think that the bulk of the game begins after you've finished the campaign is amazing. I've already got 14 hours into this one, and I'm just getting started, having just unlocked Survival, the Zen garden, and tons of the mini-games. Not to mention that the campaign is replayable, now with ALL your unlocked plants.

Great game!

Jeff-66 wrote:

Rise, zombies ... rise!

Finished Adventure mode last night. I just want to say that, at $10, PvZ is one of the best gaming values I've ever come across.

To think that the bulk of the game begins after you've finished the campaign is amazing. I've already got 14 hours into this one, and I'm just getting started, having just unlocked Survival, the Zen garden, and tons of the mini-games. Not to mention that the campaign is replayable, now with ALL your unlocked plants.

Great game!

Make sure you backup your save file(s). Mine disappeared and that is why I'll never touch the game again. I love the game, but I don't want to do the WHOLE campaign again.

garion333 wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

Rise, zombies ... rise!

Finished Adventure mode last night. I just want to say that, at $10, PvZ is one of the best gaming values I've ever come across.

To think that the bulk of the game begins after you've finished the campaign is amazing. I've already got 14 hours into this one, and I'm just getting started, having just unlocked Survival, the Zen garden, and tons of the mini-games. Not to mention that the campaign is replayable, now with ALL your unlocked plants.

Great game!

Make sure you backup your save file(s). Mine disappeared and that is why I'll never touch the game again. I love the game, but I don't want to do the WHOLE campaign again. :(

That happened to me last year. I got halfway thru the campaign, my saves disappeared, and I quit. I waited till a few weeks ago to restart, and am glad I did. But yeah, I do back up my saves now, to Dropbox. Good point.

I finally got this. It was the first application I purchased for my iPad. I can't imagine a more perfect game for this device. Playing it on a PC and having to use a mouse would feel so slow and clunky. I've finished adventure mode and have been enjoying the mini games so far, too.

Jeff-66 wrote:

That happened to me last year. I got halfway thru the campaign, my saves disappeared, and I quit. I waited till a few weeks ago to restart, and am glad I did. But yeah, I do back up my saves now, to Dropbox. Good point.

Where are the saves hiding? It's non-obvious. (This is on Vista, btw).

eta: Found mine here: C:\ProgramData\Steam\PlantsVsZombies\userdata

Now I just need to figure out how dropbox works.

Katy wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

That happened to me last year. I got halfway thru the campaign, my saves disappeared, and I quit. I waited till a few weeks ago to restart, and am glad I did. But yeah, I do back up my saves now, to Dropbox. Good point.

Where are the saves hiding? It's non-obvious. (This is on Vista, btw).

eta: Found mine here: C:ProgramDataSteamPlantsVsZombiesuserdata

Now I just need to figure out how dropbox works.

Dropbox is awesome. Once you install it, it becomes just another folder on your hard drive. It will also put an icon in your systray and probably a shortcut on your desktop. Then you just drag and drop (or copy/paste) whatever files you want to the Dropbox folder for safe keeping.

If you go to Dropbox.com, I think they have a video you can watch.

Katy wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

That happened to me last year. I got halfway thru the campaign, my saves disappeared, and I quit. I waited till a few weeks ago to restart, and am glad I did. But yeah, I do back up my saves now, to Dropbox. Good point.

Where are the saves hiding? It's non-obvious. (This is on Vista, btw).

eta: Found mine here: C:ProgramDataSteamPlantsVsZombiesuserdata

Now I just need to figure out how dropbox works.

hmmm My saves were in either My Documents or My Games in a PvZ directory.

Jeff-66 wrote:

Dropbox is awesome. Once you install it, it becomes just another folder on your hard drive. It will also put an icon in your systray and probably a shortcut on your desktop. Then you just drag and drop (or copy/paste) whatever files you want to the Dropbox folder for safe keeping.

If you go to Dropbox.com, I think they have a video you can watch.

What's even cooler than Dropbox is using SyncToy (free from Microsoft) to automatically copy folders to your Dropbox periodically. Very easy to set up and use, and the program even walks you through scheduling a task to run it daily or whatever.

IMAGE(http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/5575/synctoy.png)

You can accomplish the same thing by setting up symbolic links so that stuff is saved directly to the Dropbox, but I prefer just using it as a backup.

Sorry to wander off into techie land, but I just found out about this thing recently, and it's pretty slick.

BadKen wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

Dropbox is awesome.

What's even cooler than Dropbox is using SyncToy

Thanks, I never saw this before and just dl'ed!

Lost my wife's PvZ save not too long ago (she has since 100%'ed the game) trying to move saves around, so this is very relevant to this game for me.

BadKen, check this out too:

http://wiki.dropbox.com/DropboxAddon...

I use Synctoy as well, but I just found this today, it adds a "Sync to Dropbox" choice to your right-click menu in Explorer. Now you can right-click any folder and sync it to dropbox instantly.

Jeff-66 wrote:

BadKen, check this out too:

http://wiki.dropbox.com/DropboxAddon...

I use Synctoy as well, but I just found this today, it adds a "Sync to Dropbox" choice to your right-click menu in Explorer. Now you can right-click any folder and sync it to dropbox instantly.

Ooooh, neat!

So I finally found the secret zombie last night and am now the proud owner of 100 feet of trunk. All I have left now are the three streak achievements. So far I've only tried the "I, Zombie" one a couple of times. I always run out of money in the fifth or sixth round due to tupid mistakes like sending a digger under a potato mine or dropping a dancing zombie in front of a threepeater.
The only time I attempted Survival Endless was back when I only had eight or nine slots and I couldn't get my defenses up in time for diggers and Gargantuans.
And Vase Breaker is just crazy. If I was one of those 300APM korean Starcraft pros, it would be a cake walk, but I am not and after work my brain is in power save mode, so no light at the end of the tunnel there.

Any pro hints?

Katy wrote:
Jeff-66 wrote:

That happened to me last year. I got halfway thru the campaign, my saves disappeared, and I quit. I waited till a few weeks ago to restart, and am glad I did. But yeah, I do back up my saves now, to Dropbox. Good point.

Where are the saves hiding? It's non-obvious. (This is on Vista, btw).

eta: Found mine here: C:ProgramDataSteamPlantsVsZombiesuserdata

Now I just need to figure out how dropbox works.

I lost all my saves when I did a fresh install of Win7, because I didn't realize Popcap games are stored in that funky location. I wish Valve made all Steam game purchases store in the same place, it's such a pain in the ass locating all the game saves for third-parties. I have found game saves for third-party games located in three different folders, which are different for each version of Windows. It just shows how good PvZ and Peggle are that I'm playing through them again.

This is a neat program that will backup your saved games:

Game Save Manager
http://gsm.duncsweb.com/

...PvZ (Steam Edition) is supported

Got the gold trophy this weekend. Now all that's left is to grow the tree to complete the game - I'm not counting achievements.