Wednesday 28 August 2013

Plants Vs. Zombies 2 - I have never spent so much time gardening

After I completed Plants Vs Zombies on ios all those months ago I felt the same deflated feeling that one would imagine pre-warns death. Like you've done everything you can and you just have to let go. But then my soul was resurrected when I heard news of Plants Vs Zombies 2 finally hitting the app store. It was a glorious day when I could hit that 'install' button on my iPod and hold in my hands a new lease of life for free. I was not disappointed. The game begins with a few instructions and tips concerning the new content - the power ups for example and the new plants that take seconds to master, before taking you on a whirlwind journey with Crazy Pete through Ancient Egypt and Pirate lands all in clear, bright graphics with colours and visuals that supersede the previous.



So, what's new?
- There are loads of new plants to play around with and choose from as well as the old favourites that just get the job done.
By far my favourite - I think he's
just misunderstood 
- A more challenging interface forces you to return to previous levels and complete individual missions to gain stars in order to continue the game. I argue that this feature is possibly one of the best of the game - giving you hours of interesting, unique gameplay which is often unheard of in a free download.
- Crazy Pete isn't exactly new but he's crazier in my opinion - and we all know the crazier Pete is the better the experience
- New zombies which you will learn to fear and counteract with only specific plants making gameplay a lot more versatile
- Plant food is now available to boost up your plants for a short amount of time. This has proved to be very handy in situations where there seem to be no way out until you notice, out of the corner of your panicked eye, a green glowing zombie's head roll across the board. You dive for the plant food that's now bouncing around the screen, taking a few jabs to actually catch the bugger until you have it in your arsenal and you can turn what was once a lowly little plant into a zombie thrashing machine and save the day. Needless to say, it has saved my lawnmowers many a game.
- Power ups have been introduced and are used when even the plant food can't save you. There's a bucket head zombie attacking your last sunflower on the left hand side and you can't lose any lawnmowers to get the star you've been working for hours for. What do you do? Obviously you just pick him up and flick him away. Simples. Why were you even panicking? Unless you have no coins. Then you're f**ked.

What's everyone else saying? 
Reactions are pretty similar to mine. We all love the new game and have probably lost days worth of work productivity to its addictive tower defense system. Some are arguing that the in-game costs have put them off a bit but as far as my knowledge goes the only costs you encounter are to purchase more coins or plant food and that's not necessary to the game, in fact it kind of ruins it a bit - like cheating. To be honest, they could have easily brought this game out at a £2.99 charge and still incur in-game costs so to download it free and receive hours of gameplay for nothing sounds pretty legit to me.

Overall, I love the game. It's new interface allows for more player control in terms of which levels you complete when and the star / key incentive to go back and repeat levels with unique goals each time will be bringing me back to the game for months, i can already tell. If your ios is up to it, it's a definite must-have.

Follow me on Twitter: @MusingsTwit

Friday 23 August 2013

Desperate Times for Wii U as Sales Plummet

For me, the Wii U is a strange being. I neither really desperately need it in my life nor can i firmly decide that i shouldn't buy one. The reviews aren't great. The entire Wii brand in general hasn't received much critical success, being overshadowed by its younger and flashier predecessors, the Wii is like the chubby kid in the playground with his finger stuck up his nose - cute for all of 5 minutes but then boring and kind of sticky. I have always been a heavily, slightly creepily, loyal fan of Nintendo but there comes a point in every fandom when you realise that your long esteemed heroes are, in fact, not super-human. They have weaknesses and they make mistakes. Bringing the Wii U out as a separate console was a mistake.

So, as Wii U prices plummet and Asda gives up trying to stock it all let's take a look at why the most recent offspring of the Nintendo world perhaps isn't living up to its parents' expectations. The Wii U has failed because of the 3 areas it would have to succeed in to be any kind of contender in today's rapidly evolving technology market.

Console 
The console hardware itself is not up to scratch. The single touch controls are practically prehistoric when compared with Apple's daily dual touch releases and this gives the whole gaming experience a fairly heavy, clunky feeling which is reflected in the actual feel of the console and its slow, small internal hardrive. There's a camera on the front of the handheld though... great. We can take a low quality photo of ourselves using this instead of the HD high resolution camera that all devices come loaded with now, double chins an' all.

Marketing 
The Wii U was a marketing flop. Strangely constructed adverts and a bizarrely quiet run up to its release left consumers baffled over what the actual piece of plastic was. It took real research to find out about this console before its release, research which casual gamers wouldn't have bothered to complete and more importantly shouldn't have bothered to complete in this day and age when information is at its most available. Many consumers ended up believing that the handheld was just an add-on for the existing Wii that every family had in their home. It's no surprise then, that its sales have been abysmally low, superseded by the PS Vita within months.

3rd Party Support
No-one can do it on their own, which is why Nintendo's lack of 3rd party support is the final nail in the heavy coffin of the Wii U. It began with the ludicrous lack of new content available, Nintendo re-released ports from PS3 and X-box during the Wii U's release. Sales suffer from Nintendo's inability to attract and maintain 3rd party content and both developer and consumer are stuck in a spiral of publishers and sales figures. The Wii U isn't selling because there isn't enough 3rd party content, yet in a Catch 22 situation, 3rd party publishers are worried about these sales figures and therefore not bothering to develop for the dying console. You would think then, that Nintendo would happily accept the faith of a developer however small in bringing the Wii U back from the dead but no, they turned their backs on Japanese indie developers... interesting move Nintendo... interesting move...

It's sorely disappointing that Nintendo couldn't pull it out the bag for the Wii U. Miyamoto complains that there wasn't enough hardware development time which hindered the development of content as well which would suggest reason behind the Wii U's continuing failure. Whatever the cause, the console just isn't flashy enough to survive in the evolving digital technology market and will always be the little chubby kid in the playground. Hopefully that chubby kid will grow up to be respected for his chubbiness, in the same way the Wii U may just be valued for its simplicity and virtual console capabilities but who knows.


Sunday 11 August 2013

I'VE GOT ANIMAL CROSSING

I was verrry happy to pick up my copy of Animal Crossing recently and even happier to finally start controlling a whole town, full of fuzzy little creatures. Now, forgive me, but i was a total Animal Crossing virgin before I picked up a copy of the game in HMV last weekend and had to wait a whoooole day to play it because apparently it wasn't socially appropriate at a sleepover... dafuuuuuuqqqq?? ;) Anyway, my night owl town 'Oblivion' is underway, with developments coming from everywhaar. My favourite hobby is probably catching bugs, it's the satisfying feeling of hitting your net against that tree trunk and trapping a poor little Brown Cicada in a wiry dome of fate <--- bit weird there. Fishing is perhaps a second favourite, though the anger at reeling in too quickly and scaring the fish away has literally almost caused my 3DS console to be snapped in half on a number of occasions.

:')
I was always a bit wary of the Animal Crossing series because on paper it seems slightly boring. It's just a little mundane life, but who knew mundane life could be so interesting when it's shared with fuzzy animals and museums and gardening shops. I can see the potential now for a deceivingly large game, as everyone has already pointed out. It feels like it can give so much more, and the brilliant thing is it also feels like it WILL give so much more, you just have to be patient.

So basically, i've retired from zombie hunting and racing chubby italian plumbers round a track and have sought solitude in the grandly tiny world of Animal Crossing.