Plants vs. Zombies Adventures – Please Insert More Brainz

I’ve probably logged more time playing Plants vs. Zombies than I have almost any other game except for Tetris (as a kid I didn’t have any consoles except an NES,  thusly I am amazing at Teris, Kirby’s Adventure and smacking a console until it functions). PvZ is a great game; the PC version has tons of extra bonus games and the main game is re-playable forever. The successor for PvZ has taken PopCap in a slightly different direction – Plants vs. Zombies Adventures is a free to play Facebook game. Having sunk so many hours into the original PvZ, the idea of a PvZ Facebook game was both exciting and harrowing…who has that kind of time?

Now that I’ve gotten to play some of PvZ Adventures, I realize that fear wasn’t quite as terrifying as a Yeti-Zombie.

PvZ:A plays like a weird but fun mix of The Sims and the original Plants vs. Zombies, combining the Sims-like expansion and decoration of your town and the PvZ tower defense of both defending your town and going on a road trip (the aforementioned Adventures!) to defeat zombies in the world. There is a ton of content in this Facebook game – the adventure road trip is long, and your town, which needs reclaiming from the zombies, lot by lot, can potentially grow to epic anti-zombie proportions. Quests are given from NPCs like our old favorite Crazy Dave (the reoccurring dialog confirmation box confusion when he’s referred to as ‘David’ is the best ongoing joke. The guy doesn’t look like a David. HE’S GOT A POT ON HIS HEAD) and often work in conjunction with a road trip  a rescue of new NPC or item or task you with expanding your town’s resources.

 A lot of times Facebook games are just barely ‘free to play’ as so many power-ups, speed-ups or other useful bonuses require cold, hard cash that you can’t get anywhere playing it on a free basis. PvZ:A starts out as a pretty easily free to play game. While you can purchase extras like speed-ups for building construction and ‘Zombucks’ for item purchase, playing for free doesn’t inhibit your zombie-killing, plant-growing ambitions. A few levels in, the game starts to limit you from furthering your road trip adventures by either spending zombucks or sending requests to your friends. Zombucks, while they can be picked up in game, are of course, much easier and come in greater bulk if you provide actual bucks.

PROTECT THAT RV WITH YOUR LIVES, PLANT ARMY

Some patience is also required, because PvZ:A falls into another trap that a lot of free to play app games do: many actions take real time. To gather plants to guard your town or to take on the road with you (which is, by the way, an adorable idea – I want to get in a RV with a crop of Laura Shigihara-singing sunflowers), you have to plant them first in planter boxes on your property. Basics like the Sunflower and Peashooter don’t take long at all, but the better the plant, the longer the grow time. Your town, which can be massively expanded, requires time to grow as well, as building construction can take up to hours.

 The social aspect of a Facebook game is there, of course. Your zombie kills are logged and compared to your friends and you can take your RV on the road to your friends’ towns. The best part, by far, is siccing zombies on your friends. Higher levels unlock better zombies (and being the highest level among my friends right now, I’m the unstoppable Bucket-Head Zombie RULER OF THEM ALL). Of course the frequency of how often you can exploit your friends’ towns’ structural weaknesses is limited by real time or once again, an actual money purchase resource.

I rule my town with an iron fist. All of my knee-breakers are Beets.

The actual tower defense gameplay isn’t as expansive as the first game, at least not as far as I’ve played it. You have a lot less plants to work with (each type caps at 15 in your inventory at a time) and the battle maps are much smaller. You can spend sun to not only plant your zombie-shootin’/spearin’/gassin’ plants, but also to buff them or slow zombies, which is a fun improvement. Gameplay is faster in PvZ:A than in the original PvZ and while still tactically driven like any good tower defense (planting areas are no longer the simple grids of the first game, which adds a nice level of planning), it doesn’t feel quite as intensive as the original game could easily get. The game is also still obviously in beta – I can’t knock it for that, of course, but be warned when you log in and some of your buildings are missing, just reload the game and you’ll probably be fine. The zombies did not get your buildings for good.

Plants vs. Zombies Adventures is pretty good for a Facebook game. I’m hoping as I play it more that I’m not forced to wait longer and longer to take new actions as what has happened to me with a lot of other free to play games that I really don’t want to spend money on. If there was an unlocked version of this game that let me gain resources at a steady rate and didn’t want microtransactions, I’d buy it in a non-zombie heartbeat. PopCap did a great job with this follow-up, and I think it’ll do nicely to tide me over until there’s an actual PvZ game I can buy and spend so much more of my time playing.