After experimenting with a few of the new plants, I hit upon a tactic whereby I'd place a Wall-Nut on every row, with a Bonk Choy just behind, and use any Plant Food I collected to protect that defensive wall from being munched away too quickly. I'm particularly fond of Bonk Choy, who aggressively thumps zombies within range of his leafy fists, finishing them off with a satisfying uppercut. It's beautifully presented, too: polished, bright, and characterful, and the new plants have personality packed into each and every animation. You'll need to use them judiciously, mind - they're costly, and you'll have to shell out real money if you want to use them more than once or twice every few stages. You can also spend that in-game cash on power-ups, pinching zombies between your fingers to pop their heads off, or tracing your finger through them to zap them with a fatal dose of electricity. Peashooters, for example, fire a ferocious volley of projectiles for a few seconds, Wall-nuts gain an extra-hard shell that makes them even tougher to crack, while the Cabbage-pult unleashes a wide area attack that can take down several zombies at once. This is dropped by glowing zombies - or you can spend 1,000 in-game coins each time you need it - and it gives your plants a boost, the effects varying from one to the other. The addition of Plant Food, too, is a smart idea that adds an extra layer of strategy. In some stages you'll only be able to spend a certain amount of sun on new plants, while others require you to win without losing more than a single unit. Now, credit where it's due - these additional objectives subtly transform the strategies you need to employ, and alleviate a little of that repetition. More so when you factor in the difficulty in obtaining the third stars of each stage in particular. With 12 keys to unlock all the extra paths on the first world alone, that's a lot of repetition. And how to obtain these keys? Why, by playing levels over again until they drop. I could, of course, venture off the beaten track and tackle some of the bonus stages for extra stars, but then I'd need to find keys to unlock the gates to reach them. Yet it's only possible to collect a single star on each attempt, meaning I'd have to complete several levels multiple times to move forward. With the last wave of Stage 11 finally vanquished, I was looking forward to tackling the pirate-themed world, only to be informed that I'd need 11 more stars to unlock it - or I could pay £2.99 / $4.99 if I didn't fancy going back.Īt this stage, several of the levels I'd already beaten suddenly had new objectives to complete, with three stars to collect on each. I finished the majority on my first attempt, but needed a couple of shots at the final two or three stages. There's a path straight to the next area, with 11 levels to complete. Take, for example, your progress through the first world: Ancient Egypt. PopCap's solution is a little different, but at times - and particularly in light of this sequel's significantly sharper difficulty curve - that all-important charm, the reason we fell in love with an otherwise fairly straightforward tower defence game in the first place, is lost. Many games deliberately, cynically hold players back in order to encourage them to spend. The trouble with F2P is that so many games have their design structured around micro-transactions. It has, however, made it much more of a grind. Free-to-play hasn't ruined Plants vs Zombies.
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