Plants of Mass Destruction

So, as February levels up into March, I peek my head out of the trenches and survey the battlefield that is gaming.

Unnecessary metaphors aside, I've been playing two games recently. Both of them quite heavily feature plants. Let's go!

Eufloria is an indie game by two developers, Rudolf Kremers and Alex May, and is a sort of exploration/RTS hybrid. It's very much as describe on it's site, an ambient game. The goal is to send your seedlings to other asteroids and plant them, so that they can create new seedlings. You encounter opposition in the form of rival seedlings and have to fight them off using defensive trees and the seedlings themselves. One rather cool feature is the ability to zoom in and out of the battlefield using the scroll wheel. From far away, you can view all of your asteroids, with dots representing your seedlings, but you can zoom right down to the level where you can see all of your seedlings firing at the enemy. It's a neat feature.

Plants Vs. Zombies... It feels weird typing this, since originally I was not a big fan of the whole concept of tower defence where your towers can be destroyed by the enemy. But PvZ has really grown on me. It's a fun game with a fair amount of longevity, since you can replay the adventure mode again with a slightly harder difficulty level. The games sense of humour is fantastic, and the final boss fight in the adventure mode is a good laugh. The achievements give the game a real sense of depth and give you something to aim for.
I take it all back, Plants Vs. Zombies. You're alright.

I started this post on Wednesday evening. So much has happened in terms of gaming since then. Grr.

See y'all in the garden!

Schmupdate

Lotsa things been occurring. Therefore, this is the next in the series of general updates, which I title by putting random letters in front of the word "update". DON'T ASK, I DON'T KNOW WHY.

Had a rather expensive month this month. Valentines Day was more expensive than usual, because I was buying many a present for my lovely girlfriend, who is lovely. And I'm sure she won't be reading this blog. I'm sure of it. Sure. Hey.

Went home on Monday evening, to see Jimmy Carr at a local theatre. A very fun evening, but more relevantly, I took the opportunity to use the 360 to have a go at Bioshock 2. I picked it up cheap from GAME cause I traded in Dante's Inferno for it. I only got to play the first hour or so, but what I played of it I enjoyed. The storyline could be interesting, and the simultaneous plasmid-and-gun combat feels great. I didn't really like the rivet gun, it didn't seem to have that much "umpf." I'm really looking forward to sitting down for a big play session at some point.

I also managed to grab six (that's right SIX) indie titles for the cheap sum of 12 quid. The pack is comprised of Machinarium, Eufloria, Osmos, Aztaka, And Yet It Moves, and Auditorium. Admittedly I haven't heard of some of them, but all the descriptions looked really interesting. That, plus Machinarium cost £15 on Steam. BARGAIN! Expect a NR review for some of them soon. I'll probably do a "Postcards From" for Machinarium as well...

Plants Vs Zombies got released on the App Store the other day, and I thought I may as well pick it up, since it's cheaper on the iPod than on Steam. I had a few reservations about it on the PC which stopped me picking it up. As a big fan of online Flash games, I've played my fair share of tower defense games, and PvZ seemed all over the place. After having a go on the iPod version, I have to say that I do enjoy it, but I still don't understand why it was such a media darling when it was released. The resource gathering is questionable at best and the plants don't feature any upgrades, which is a feature I always enjoy. That said, there's a wide range of plants to choose from, and the game has quite a good sense of humour. DOOM-SHROOM!

Right, that's that then. I'm gonna walk away from this blog post as it explodes behind me, as I strut forwards. In diamond covered boots.

See y'all next time.