Not the usual game I would review but I was obsessed over it all weekend.  Plants vs Zombies is a tower defense game from PopCap Games and is also available on Steam.  The story is that you are trying to protect your home from the neighborhood Zombies.  I personally would think that your Realtor should mention zombie infestations but maybe that isn’t common enough.

Every level gives you either new zombies to battle, new plants to work with, a mini-game type level, or a combination of these.  The plants are not as diverse as they might seem.  This is mainly because you are going to find ones that work and just stick with them.  You might upgrade to other plants that do the same thing but that’s about it for change.

Zombies on the other hand are diverse an quickly become dangerous.  You start out battling the easy standard ones and quickly move up to American football player zombies and ones on Zamboni.  Throughout every levels there are slow times where yes a few zombies come out, such as early in the level as you build your defense, and then escalates to denser waves.

The level design while simplistic is very detailed in recreating a font yard, backyard with pool, and a terracotta rooftop.  All the levels are made up of five rows that zombies move along.  The good news is that at the end of each row is something to mow down the zombies if they manage to reach the edge.  The flip side to this is that the device to mow them down does not regenerate during a level.

Now in the past with the Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders games I have played a lot of tower defender style games, however this one is hands down the cutest and most addicting.  The only point of improvement might be in the exponential difficulty, especially with the mini-games.

So, I need to start off by saying that, like everyone else, I’ll mostly be comparing Mass Effect 2 to its predecessor.  Either one is still better than at least 90% of video games in the world, and it’s hard to compare BioWare’s trademark Action-RPG epics to anything other than themselves.  If I’m hard on Mass Effect 2, and I feel like I will be, that’s why.  I also feel like I’m in the minority in a lot of these opinions, but…hey, that’s why they’re opinions.

Anywho, so the very first thing you notice (well, second after the fact that it’s a two-disc game) about Mass Effect 2 is it’s amazing cast, and gorgeous graphics.  We notice that because the first thing you see after hitting start is a cutscene of “The Illusive Man” (played by and modeled after Martin friggin’ Sheen), inside some holographic room full of floating computer screens and spacescapes.  Other names attached to the cast include: Tricia Helfer, Michael Hogan, Adam Baldwin, Keith David, Phil LaMarr, Michael Dorn, Seth Green, Yvonne Strahovski, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Armin Shimerman.  If you’re a geek at all, chances are you know at least half of those people, if not by name then by voice.
Thanks in no small part to this casting, the dialogue in ME2 is worthy of whatever award it could be eligible for.  Easily some of the best writing in an action game you’ll see….probably until a week from now, when BioShock 2 comes out…but that still remains to be seen.

The graphics are very similar to ME1, using the same Unreal Engine.  The new Normandy is far more detailed, as is every alien planet and city…at least what we’re allowed to see of them…more on that later.  You’ll travel to foggy swamplands, research stations on planets that have strayed too close to their sun, a maximum security space prison, a beach-front paradise where the local food causes dementia, as well as the obligatory beautiful high-rise-filled space hub, and the equally beautiful crime-filled space slum.  You won’t mind having to run back to these places multiple times just to satisfy your compatriots, and if you’re like me, you’ll want to spend more time there than the game allows.

The Bioware team certainly knows their audience, and probably more likely, they are their audience.  Through the game you’ll get (hit over the head at times, with) several references, homages, and straight-up rip-offs of Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars, the Riddick series, The Matrix, Mortal Kombat, Firefly, and Star Trek.  Especially Star Trek.  I expect Bioware is full of trekkies.  For example, one (out of two) of the engineers is Scottish.  Small, yes, but glaringly obvious.  Thankfully, I think they treat Mass Effect as “this is how we could do Star Trek and Star Wars together, and make them better”.  If that’s the case, then they’ve done well.
Also, ME1 came out before I knew much of anything about H. P. Lovecraft, and I didn’t notice how drenched in Cthulhu Mythos it is.  The Reapers are huge squid-like beings/ships that are far older than anything we know, with power beyond what we can imagine, residing in the abyss just outside of our galaxy.  Sounds familiar.
“…even dead gods can dream.” – a recording in Mass Effect 2
“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” – The Call of Cthulhu.

The sound design is great, per usual.  The same award-winning team that did the original soundtrack returns to compose this installment, Jack Wall (who also composed the music for Myst 3, Myst 4, and Jade Empire, among other things) and Sam Hulick (who also composed the music for….some games that no one has played).  A lot of ME1′s soundtrack is reused in ME2, with just as much new music mixed in, and it all retains the same orchestra-with-synthesizers sound fitting for a space-epic.  If you’re a fan of Jack Wall, or similar scores (Blade Runner, for example), it’s well worth seeking out a copy of the soundtrack

As far as gameplay goes, they didn’t fix what wasn’t broken.  Combat is mostly the same, with some subtle improvements.  A cover system has been added, as well as the ability to throw your biotics (magic force powers) around corners.  The same old dialogue wheel returns, with some new quick-time-type events where you can interrupt the dialogue with a paragon (nice guy) or renegade (mean guy) action.  They’re always fun, and they give you plenty of time to hit them, as opposed to the typical “Press X to not die” quick-time event.  The dialogue is so well done (and some of asshole-Shepherd’s lines are hilarious) that you will genuinely want to play it again to hear what you missed the first time, not just to pick up a few extra achievements.  Something that doesn’t happen all that often in adventure games.

So, as much as there is that remains unchanged, there are some major changes in the sequel.  The inventory system has been considerably simplified.  For example, instead of 100 different makes and models of pistol, you’ll get maybe 2 pistols throughout the whole game.  You’ll never change your base armor; instead you’ll buy a few different components that each have their own bonuses (e.g. greaves with +10% running speed, chest plate with +5% health, arms with +7% melee damage, etc).  With weapons, you can upgrade them, either by buying them in a store with credits, or researching them on your ship, with metal resources.  Most members of your crew will also offer upgrade to the Normandy itself, something that’s crucial in the final stages of the game.

Which brings me to the first real complaint of the game: mining.  There is nothing more boring in the world of RPG video games than resource gathering/farming.  All that monotony and tediousness has now come to our beloved Mass Effect.  You fly to any old random planet, and by holding down one button, scan the entire surface, zeroing in on the strongest signal you get from your scanner.  Once the scanner meter spikes, you fire a probe at it (because that makes sense), and that deposit of metals is added to you resources.  You initially can hold 30 probes, and a mineral-rich planet could very well take 25 of them before it’s depleted. That means you have to travel back to the fuel depot (oh yeah, you have to buy fuel and probes too) and spend some credits before you can travel back out and strip-mine the next planetary victim on your list.  Usually the most mineral-rich planets are the small rocky planets, while the gas giants are usually less valuable.  Naturally these smaller planets wouldn’t take as long to scan as the biggies, right?  No.  They take the same annoying amount of time.  *sigh*

Elevators.  Anyone who’s played ME1 knows that elevators were one of the most hated elements of the original game.  Well, they’re gone in ME2…and you’ll miss them.  See, they used the elevators in ME1 to cover up the fact that they were loading the area you were going to.  So, they solved the elevator problem by severely cutting down on all areas, and using traditional (though context-appropriate) loading screens.  There’s nothing I miss more in ME2 as the huge sprawling Citadel.  As dumb as it sounds, I loved exploring the towns, solving people’s marital problems, running errands for lazy Council members, and mostly soaking up the amazing atmosphere.  As much as we all hated “driving” (which mostly consisted of just trying to make it go in a straight line) the Mako, I liked exploring the randomly generated planets, while avoiding the obvious-trap flat areas.
You still have random side encounters on random planets, though they’re few and far between.  They’re also a million times more interesting.  One that stands out in my mind has Shepherd by himself, investigating a crashed ship, which is teetering precariously over the edge of a cliff.  You know the game wouldn’t throw you into a ravine, but the tension of hearing metal grinding on rock, and watching the horizon start to tilt forward is significant.  That’s something that couldn’t have happened with the old random-encounter system.  It’s certainly a welcome addition, I just wish it didn’t have to come at the price of the opportunity to actually explore these strange new worlds.

Like I said, even with all my complaints, which I admit were fairly nitpicky, Mass Effect 2 is still a must-play.  Probably the greatest tragedy of this and the rest of the Mass Effect trilogy is the limitations of the format.  It’s amazing now, but when the next generation of consoles comes along, I fear Mass Effect will be shrugged off by many as “nice, but so-last-gen”.  This seems fairly unique to video games, something that wouldn’t happen to a print or film trilogy.  Sure, games can endure time, but some only by the grace of them becoming “retro”.  It’s availability on PC does help, as PC gamers seem to be far more accepting of a 5+ year old game than the fickle console gamer lot.

With Mass Effect 2 will come (and already have) comparisons to Empire Strikes Back or The Two Towers.  It’s an apt and quite worthy comparison; while the game feels epic, it also feels like what it is, the middle-part of a greater story.  Fortunately we won’t have to wait long for the thrilling conclusion, as Mass Effect 3 is scheduled for release next year.  While it in all likelihood will be pushed back to 2012, it won’t be the 3-year jump between ME1 and ME2.  Until then, we’ll just have to enjoy BioWare’s latest masterpiece, and whatever DLC they have on the way.