Still an addicting game optimized for bite-sized sessions | Review - Plants vs Zombies 3
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✨Overview
Plants vs. Zombies 3: Welcome to Zomburbia, is the third main installment of the popular tower defense game series developed by PopCap Games. In the game, players must defend their home from waves of zombies by strategically placing different types of plants in their yard.
Plants vs. Zombies 3 has had a rough history since it’s initial announcement, it has been soft-launched and re-launched, revamped multiple times that I could count, that it even added a ‘Welcome to Zomburbia’ subtitle now with its recent release. With today’s news, it feels like REAL release is coming soon, as Plants vs. Zombies 3: Welcome to Zomburbia has now soft launched in limited regions. Players in the UK, Netherlands, Australia, Philippines, and Ireland will have early access, with more countries coming at a later date.
🟩Pros
+Addictive gameplay
+Charming simplistic cartoon visuals
+Optimized for bite-sized gaming sessions
+Homescape-esque style of decorating the town and environment
🟥Cons
-Very simplified mechanics compared to its predecessors that it loses a lot of depth
-A bit too much handholding with the tutorials, very unliberating for the player
⭐️Score: 7/10
📖Story and Premise
Plants vs. Zombies 3: Welcome to Zomburbia continues where the first two games left off: an army of zombies is on a quest to invade your town Neighborville (yet again), and your only line of defense is an arsenal of quirky plants with special abilities, thanks to Crazy Dave, a humorous mainstay character who aids players with tips and acts as a guide. It still has that same style of humor and creativity into its story. The premise is just enough to provide a basic backdrop for players to keep blasting zombies using plants.
🎨Visuals and Art
The game features the same 2D aesthetic with visuals are still charming, colorful, and filled with character. Although honestly, it feels a bit of a downgrade from PvZ 2’s shiny and detailed 3D-ish art design, here in PvZ 3 it adopts a more cartoonish and simplistic design. This shift in style doesn't necessarily detract from the game's appeal though. In fact, the more straightforward design can have its own charm, making the game accessible to a broader audience and emphasizing the core gameplay elements.
🎮Gameplay
Plants vs. Zombies 3 at its core is a tower defense game that tasks players with strategically placing plants to fend off waves of zombies coming. The gameplay is simple to understand but offers a surprising amounts of strategic layer as players progress through the levels.
The player's arsenal consists of a diverse array of plants, each with unique abilities. Some are good for single targets, some AOE, some deals massive amounts of damage but is only a one-time use, some are used purely for defensive purposes. The game introduces new plants, boosts, and power-ups gradually over time, keeping the experience fresh and challenging for the first few levels or so.
The dopamine rush of successfully countering a tough zombie wave using a well-thought-out plant arrangement is one of the game's most rewarding aspects, and it’s quite hard to put the game down once you start playing — it’s still the same feeling over again as with its predecessors. It's still a very addicting game, despite the changes to the mechanics that might not resonate very well with hardcore fans.
🚧 A more simplified bite-sized experience
Many things have changed in how the game plays, and most of these changes stem from the game being more simplified to cater to the masses, adopting a more familiar and modern standard of mobile game models.
The resource cost for the plants has been dialed down from increments of 25/50/75+ to just single digits of 1/2/3+ (which is essentially the same). The levels have been simplified to around a minute each, making it more of a bite-sized game that you can play in small amounts of time, on-the-go, but at the cost of having less depth and action to the battles. Just as the levels starts to get real action-packed and interesting, it usually ends, which is quite unfortunate.
Additionally, there is lesser strategy now since you won't be able to choose your starting seeds/plants; it's all predetermined per level. As said before, these changes might not resonate well with the more hardcore and strategic PvZ players, but they have the upside of attracting a more casual audience.
⏫Progression
The game starts with a series of introductory levels, where players learn the basics of planting and defending against basic zombie types. These levels serve as a gentle introduction to the game mechanics, allowing players to understand the roles of different plants. What I don’t like is that the game basically continues this hand holding trend far into the gameplay with basically brain dead levels to ‘show how it’s done’, with no way to skip it if you already know what to do. It kinda kills the otherwise fast-paced momentum of the game.
The storytelling progression is structured in a way that rewards players with one ticket each for completing levels. Each completed level grants the player one ticket, and these tickets are used to access cutscenes that reveal the unfolding story and unlocks more of the Homescape-esque Garden/Town building aspect of the game.
Fortunately, you can skip these cutscenes and you don’t have to use the tickets as you complete each level, you can choose to accumulate tickets for a more extended storytelling experience, it gives players flexibility in how they engage with the narrative while keeping the focus on continuous and enjoyable gameplay. For example, you can play for 10 levels straight to get 10 tickets, so you get 10 tickets worth of continuous story.
The game also features five lives to use that regenerates over time — much like games like Candy Crush or Homescapes, failing to complete levels will result in lives lost, although it isn’t much of a problem in the first few chapters as you’re given plenty of free boosts to keep going. The game has in-app purchases, such as booster packs that rewards players with free lives, extra coins, power-ups, or boosts to use.
📊Technical Performance
The game ran without serious issues on my Snapdragon 888 device, although it noticeably runs at a lower framerate than I'm used to in games. My in-game meter is showing 30FPS but it feels much lower than that with how the game is animated. There are no settings to change, and the only options in the game are turning the audio on and off and adjusting the volumes.
⚖️Conclusion
Plants vs Zombies have really changed with the times. It now feels like a mobile-centric game influenced by modern live service elements instead of a casual indie PC title that the original games were. Still, Plants vs Zombies 3 is a traditional PvZ game through and through at its core, and despite its questionable gameplay evolution, it’s still an addicting game --- now optimized for bite-sized gaming sessions.
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