Plants Vs. Zombies

PUBLISHER: PopCap
DEVELOPER: PopCap
Played on: PC
Initial impression: Defensive gardening!

Liked:
- Challenges in Adventure Mode
- Other Modes

Disliked:
- Randomness

On The Fence:
- Extra Junk



This one is straight forward. The Zombies are attacking! Use your sentient plants to defend your brains! In what is pretty much the epitome of tower defense, you use different types of plants to take out waves of zombies intent on taking over your house. The plants all run on "sun" power, generated by - what else? - Sunflowers. Using the sun power as currency you can purchase offensive and defensive plants, as well as upgraded variants, to take down the ever-attacking, ever-evolving undead. The zombies have a few tricks up their dusty sleeves, with some wearing buckets on their heads, riding pogo sticks or starting a disco dance party. Sometimes the weather works in their favor, with fog obscuring half your yard.

As you go through the Adventure mode the new plants and the adapted zombies are part of the challenge. Often, you can rely on a lot of the same strategy, but some levels require you to use specific items. Some plants will blow the fog away. Others will explode when stepped on. Some fry whole lines of zombies all at once.

The other challenge modes, playing the other side as a zombie or only using the items available to you over time from a conveyor belt or a series of clay pots you have to smash, are great. Since it's PopCap, some of the other game modes imitate their popular games like Bejeweled and InsanAquarium. It's a lot of fun.

Disliked
It's tough to really call out the game on flaws since it's a casual puzzle game, but if I had to - and I feel I do - I'd say the most annoying thing has to be the occasional randomness that causes you to fail. They say that every time you fire up the MS Windows game Solitaire that you should be able to win. Same could be said for this game, but in both instances I'm going to tell you this - sometimes the game screws you over. It makes winning impossible. It sets up conditions or scenarios where no matter what you do, you will lose. I had to restart a puzzle-mode about 6 times before the conditions were suitable to even try. It wasn't just that one time, either.

On The Fence
It's a game about planting mutant flora to take down invading corpses. The main game is exactly that. The side games are also about that. There's some bonus junk that seems... pointless. The Zen Garden, where you raise money-sprouting flowers, for example. Yeah, I'm doing it but I don't quite see... why.

I bought this game through Valve's Steam store during one of their ridiculous Christmas sales. I suggest that if you like puzzle games and this sale comes around again you should buy it. It's SO worth the $5 I paid for it, and it may be worth as much as $10 depending on how much you like puzzle games. I've even played it on the iPad and it works perfectly. Maybe they'll release more game modes or an extended Adventure mode some time...

Great game. 9/10

Assassin's Creed II

PUBLISHER: Ubisoft
DEVELOPER: Ubisoft
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Like the first one, but better.

Liked:
- Story (both parts)
- Environment (Past)
- Hirelings
- Upgrade system
- Puzzles


Disliked:
- Some Quirky Controls
- Feather Hunting (it's optional)


On The Fence:
- Length
- Travel system

AC2 picks up mere moments from AC1, that is to say the "present" part of the story line. You start pretty much where it left off - standing in the bedroom/cell where the "present" character was stuck. Lucy, the Animus tech, returns to help you escape but not until they unlock another distant relative's memory bank - Ezio. You get out of the lab and off to a secret location where a rag-tag group of characters have created the Animus Version 2 - a slimline dentist chair looking device that works better than the cold slab table you were on before. Once into the memory bank you assume the role of Ezio, a sex-crazed, carefree punk of a guy who just does whatever he wants... and that comes back to bite him in the ass.

Long story short, corruption causes him to lose his brothers and father. The same old "Piece Of Eden" story comes into play. In the modern world, the Templars are still looking for you and you can acquire skills by learning them in the Animus - somewhat of a Matrix-style, they download into your head.

Liked
The story and environments are great. I know I say this a lot, but it's true. Someone really paid attention to 1490's Italian architecture because it looks fantastic. The places feel alive, with people all over the place, talking to each other, buying stuff at stores, etc. There are groups of people you can interact with - courtesans, thieves and mercenaries - who are not passive scenery dressing. They can be commanded to attack or distract guards, allowing you to enter restricted areas with out starting a fight. They can be used to help you blend in and hide amongst the crowd.

The upgrade system was great. It's all money-based, and you gain cash by doing missions or repairing your uncle's home. His home town is in a sorry state and you can improve the local shops, thereby bringing in more business from out of town. Taxes go right into your pocket, which you use to upgrade more buildings or buy more weapons or armor. Each personal upgrade has its pros and cons (until later, where you get your hands on Altair's sword and armor) and you can swap out weapons at any time just by visiting the villa.

One rather odd but nifty feature is the addition of a new unseen character - "Subject 16". He's the one who left you all those strange symbols on your cell wall, and now those are embedded in Ezio's memory. You can find them scrawled on buildings when you search in Eagle Vision. When you interact with them, a puzzle mode is unlocked. There is an overall solution spread across 20-odd symbols, but each symbol has its own odd solution. Sometimes it's a series of rings with a picture on them that needs to be lined up. Sometimes it's a code wheel that has to be deciphered, then used to decode another part of the riddle. Sometimes you have to find a common theme amongst a series of paintings. The later puzzles were a stretch - I have yet to understand WTF the last couple mean or how you're supposed to figure them out. I had to look them up to solve them, and I tried for about an hour each.

Disliked
Not much to really complain about on this one. The wonky controls from the last one are still present, though refined. I had a few issues where, even when holding the proper button configuration, Ezio didn't want to jump from rooftop to rooftop like I told him. Instead he'd stop dead, act like he was going to fall and sometimes slip and cling on to the edge. Other times he fell - sometimes to his death. It was frustrating, especially when running from the guards.

The feather hunting business is stupid too. I get it - it's to unlock a cool reputation item. They should make it possible for me to buy a map showing me where they are. I wouldn't care if it was $10,000 a region... I hate hunting for things like that. I think I'm up to 71/100, and I know I'm missing 1 each in two towns. Will I ever find those? Probably not. Like Blast Shards from inFAMOUS, I'll probably give up and never play the game again. *Update: I found them all. AC2 is the only Platinum trophy I have.

On The Fence
The length of this game is short. Not Bioshock 2 short, but short nonetheless. Sure, I could have dragged it out more by chasing the feathers in each region before going on with the story, or doing all the side quests as they came up, but after a while you just want something fun to do. At least climbing towers wasn't boring. They weren't always the same, and some required skills acquired later in the game in order to climb!

The short of this is - it's a great game, so much so that I'd give it 8/10. Some of the frustrating elements and the length give it a couple points off. I'd steer pretty much everyone to play it. You don't need to play the first one, but it helps. Buy it? Maybe if it's on sale, but totally not worth it for $60.

Assassin's Creed

PUBLISHER: Ubisoft
DEVELOPER: Ubisoft
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Medieval killing spree... no wait, what? Oh, ok...

Liked:
- Story (Past)
- Environment (Past)

Disliked:
- Story & Environment (Present)
- Repetition
- Quirky Controls
- One Odd Glitch


On The Fence:
- Lack of Trophies


The year is -- well I'm not sure but I'll claim it's the modern day/alternate reality where sci-fi junk exists. You're Desmond, some unknown schmuck who apparently is a distant relative of a great assassin from the middle ages. You're being held captive, made to use the Animus, a sci-fi inspired device that allows you to interact with genetic memories. As far as sci-fi plots go, this was... believable but unexpected.

Into the Animus - The year is 1190. It's the 3rd Crusade and the Templars are attacking the 'Holy Land' like crazy. In the midst of all this the assassin's guild is trying to thwart their every move. The Templars are after a powerful relic. After the opening, you are stripped of all your weapons and your rank in the guild. You have to prove you are worthy of them by pulling off a number of assassinations.

Liked
Not much to elaborate on.
The Crusade-side of the story was interesting. It kept me coming back.
I loved the look of the towns too.

Disliked
The modern day stuff, both story and environment, didn't really catch my interest. Maybe because it wasn't the direction I thought the game was going to take - not really sure. Something about it kind of irked me every time I was forced into it.

Repetition was this game's biggest flaw. Get assignment. Go to a town. Climb some towers to fill out the map.Help townsfolk in trouble. Gather info on target. Get approval from Assassin's Bureau. Kill target. Escape. Repeat. After target number 3 it felt more like a chore than anything else.

What totally didn't help was the controls. As I stated before, once I equated the touchy controls to the same crap I went through in inFAMOUS, I was in a better place - but that aside, it was still a pain in the ass.They teach you all these fancy techniques to use in fights but you're pretty much reduced to "hold block, counter their attack" for every fight. I wasn't able to pull off any good moves aside from the random pissed off button mashing made something ridiculous happen moves every once in a great while. Combos shouldn't be so difficult, and this comes from a guy who loves playing Ivy and Yoshimitsu in Soul Calibur.

There was ONE ODD GLITCH that I couldn't replicate but damn if it didn't totally fuck me up. I was fighting the end bad guy. I chased him around the garden and went for a jump-kill while he was running away. I missed him but managed to slip through the game mesh and into an area where I kept falling... and falling... and falling... for about 15 seconds. I eventually died from such a high fall but it took forever.

On The Fence
There are NO PS3 trophies for Assassin's Creed. None. Not even a "congrats for beating the main story line" one. While that's not really anything to hold against the game - because a lot of early PS3 titles were lacking them until Sony made it a requirement - it was kind of disappointing. Yeah I can say I beat the game and all but having a piece of code unlock a little icon that says "yup, he beat the game" is nice every once in a while.

I give Assassin's Creed a 7 out of 10. The controls are frustrating but the visuals more than make up for it. It's worth playing only so you get the whole story before diving into AC2.

7/10

Post-Holiday Haul and Activities

This season was very kind to me. Here's what I acquired:

PC: Plants Vs. Zombies GOTY, Bully: Scholarship Edition, NWN2 Platinum (all from the Steam sale)
PS3: Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, God of War III, Prototype, Darksiders, Bayonetta.

I also got the PS3 keyboard. This thing is great. The hunt/peck with the controller and the on-screen keyboard a few times was bad to the point where I nearly resorted to txtspk. Thankfully this little keyboard saves the day. It's costly considering what it is - just a Bluetooth keyboard - but to me it's a worthy accessory. I think the more you use PS Home or send console-mail the better it is. I don't go to Home much but I do like to send the occasional lengthy console message...

All that aside, the only games I've been tooling around with over the last few weeks have been Ghostbusters and PvZ (until last night when I fired up Assassin's Creed). GB is all about acquiring trophies. I had a vague idea of what needed to be done for a handful of them and those few came easy. I was working on some game-spanning activities (collecting all the cursed items, drinking from all the water fountains) when I picked up Plants Vs Zombies for about $5.

Plants Vs. Zombies
My cursory complaint with PvZ is that they tie you to the story-based "adventure mode" to unlock other game play modes. Having already been familiar with the PvZ game I wanted to see what else the title had to offer but sadly discovered they want you to toil through level after level of "adventure mode" in order to slowly reveal mini-games. I have yet to unlock anything in "puzzle mode" and I only have three out of twenty mini-games available. Still, it's a casual/puzzle game to begin with so I shouldn't really be too upset with it. I do not like the first mini-game you unlock where the zombies shoot back. Zombie bowling is fun, as is the slot machine mini-game.

In bowling you are supplied endless Wall-Nuts to roll at the oncoming horde. Some of these explode on contact, though mostly they will bounce among the enemies like a pinball, racking up precious coins you use to buy upgrades. The slot machine game is a crap shoot on what defenses you will have. You use Sun power to activate the slots then pull the handle. You may get 1 or 3 of any number of defenses, upgrades or more sun power. It gets frantic when you are lacking defenses and the zombies are closing in.

Assassin's Creed
I started Assassin's Creed last night. I had already heard it had some screwy controls and I was prepared. At one point I was running from a guard and went to climb up a building to escape. I scrambled upward, dodged right, ran around a tower and climbed upward some more. The next thing I knew I was sailing through the air to my death. The game reloaded faster than I could utter a "what the f..." and I continued on. Again I found myself being pursued by the law and attempted to escape by climbing to safety. I found Altair grabbing on to some random parts of the building and just sitting there. The guards were hacking apart his kidneys but the deadly assassin was dangling like a dumb ape from an awning.

Then it hit me - I've experienced this kind of bullshit control before: inFAMOUS. Cole did the same stupid things. Once I equated AC to InFAMOUS I was in a better place.