Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

The Short

Pros
- Hilarious, cheesy, well-written story
- Absolutely outrageous and over the top characters
- Playing both detective and attorney can be a blast
- Great music and art
- Sticks with you long after you beat the game
- Cases are fun and have some great twists (despite the last one being weak)
- Being able to yell "HOLD IT!" or "OBJECTION!" into the DS mic is freaking hilarious
- iOS and Wii ports are both solid

Cons
- Short, with only five cases
- Relies a heavy amont on its own designed "logic," which can lead to issues
- Detective portions can be guesswork to find a certain object before the game lets you progress
- Graphically looks like the GBA port it is, with the touchscreen relatively useless
- Final fifth case feels tacked on (because it was)

The start of a thousand memes. 

The Long

I love the fact that Phoenix Wright exists, because it means that somewhere over in Japan somebody came into work at Capcom HQ and was like, "You know what the industry is missing? LAWYER GAMES."

And from that absolutely brilliant idea was birthed the Phoenix Wright franchise. First released in Japan on the GBA, it was ported (someone lazily) over to the new Nintendo DS for American audiences. And, yes, I was being serious before: this is a game where you play a lawyer. A defense attorney, to be completely accurate. And you do exactly what you think: defend people in court. Yep.

Which makes it all the more amazing at how incredible Phoenix Wright is. 

Brilliant burn there, Mr. Wright.

I won't lie: the majority of your enjoyment from Phoenix Wright is going to be from its absurd story (or stories might be more accurate). You play as Phoenix Wright, rookie defense attorney who is just starting off his career. As such he's insecure, makes awful jokes, and gets a bit overconfident at times. Luckily he has helpful tutors to guide him, but quickly the training wheels are taken off and he's thrown into the big world of defensive lawyering all by himself. 

That's where you come in. 

As the player, you will be participating in one of two activities: either going around collecting evidence (visiting witnesses, searching for clues, etc.) or getting into court to present those clues. The game is structured such that you cannot miss anything necessary during detectiving: it's pretty much a straight shot as you tick off check boxes to get to the end. Pretty basic. 

This game makes being a lawyer look more intense than doing back flips on a BMX bike off the side of the Grand Canyon while drinking Monster Energy. 

Back to the story: you have five cases to deal with (though four were the only ones included on the GBA games, and thus they flow together well while the fifth is a bit tacked on) and you have to prove your person innocent or die trying! Luckily Phoenix only gets people who actually are innocent, so there's no moral conundrum here. Where the game really shines, however, is its absurd characters. 

From crazy afro-lady photographers to blue-haired rich scumbags, sleeping crazy hermits or insane old ladies, Phoenix Wright has it all. It even has an evil attorney named Manfred Von Karma. Seriously, they couldn't ham this up any more if they tried. 

The silliness really shines, however, because of the balance. Many of these cases are serious (murders, digging up into the main character's pasts to reveal some genuinely dark secrets, and more) but the game keeps everything so over the top that the melodrama plays nicely with the exaggerated absurdity. To not mince any more words: the game is downright charming, well written, and knows exactly how serious to take itself (read: not at all). The jokes are spot on and the cases are genuinely interesting, which is all you really need.

Suck it, Edgeworth. 

The gameplay, unfortunately, doesn't really deliver as much as one might hope. As stated before you have two main things to do in Ace Attorney: search for evidence, then use the evidence in a court scene. Of these two, the former is by far the most aggravating. Searching a static image for small object is about as fun as looking for a needle in a haystack, especially since often you aren't even sure if you are looking in the right location. The game gates you from continuing until you fulfill certain (unknown) objectives, meaning it is very easy to get stuck and frustrated. When you do find clues it's usually really rewarding, as it's often accompanied by a silly bit of dialogue. But playing Sherlock is very slow, frustrating, and you rarely feel like you actually accomplished a goal. It's more like you luckily stumbled on the right place to tell the game that you are allowed to continue now.

Courtroom drama plays much better. You are charged with listening to both the information given as well as witness testimony. I dunno if they made these people swear on a Bible or whatever, but they lie constantly, and its your job to unravel it all and force them to spill the beans. You do this by tearing apart their statements chunk by chunk, pushing when necessary and using evidence to expose the lies. It works about 80% of the time, with the other 20% where the game falls to "adventure game logic," meaning next to no logic at all. It's the whole "throw the pie at the yeti" trap from King's Quest V: some leaps of logic simply don't make sense. After a while you can start to think the way the game wants you, but even then I would get stuck on some stupid cross examinations later in the game. 

But I will say: when you totally destroy a known liar's testimony using your wits and evidence (usually resulting in the person actually breaking down in defeat), that soul-crush is delicious.

You get five mistakes a trial, then you have to start all over. 

Graphically, Ace Attorney looks like a GBA game. The top screen does pretty much everything, with the bottom being reserved for menu choices or...tap to advance text. The game also looks a bit low-res (especially on high-res iPhone, which this game has been ported to) even on the DS screen. However, the bright colors and absurd art stylings do more than make up for the technical shortcomings. 

The music is also excellent. Even though there's only a handful of tracks, they are just as suspenseful and over-the-top as one would expect from a game about super-lawyers. You'll find yourself humming these tunes long after the game is over.

Ya screwed up. 

Despite having some rather glaring gameplay issues, I absolutely love Phoenix Wright. If you treat it more like an interactive visual novel instead of a game (and use a guide for the dull "play detective" parts), the story here is an absolute riot and absolutely worth diving in for. While Phoenix Wright might not be the most inspired game in terms of mechanics, the idea of making a lawyer game is undoubtably inspired. It's a hoot, genuinely emotional, and necessary playing if you own a DS or an iOS device (or a Wii, since I guess its out on that too). 

While the sequels do tend to fare a little better, this first game is still my favorite. Four out of five stars. 

Nice hair.

Chrono Trigger

The Short


Pros
- One of the most definitive JRPGs ever made
- Combines the talents of industry greats: Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, and artist Akira Toriyama
- Beautiful graphics with a realized art style
- Excellent music throughout full of memorable tracks
- Unique gameplay system mixes the ATB system from Final Fantasy with combo tech attacks
- Charming and interesting story with some genuinely clever reveals
- Fourteen endings; introduced the New Game + system to tackle them all (DS version has seventeen endings)

Cons
- First playthrough is short; only 15-20 hours
- Game is exceptionally easy
- Adventure is linear until the very, very end
- Getting an original cartridge on the SNES can be a bit pricey
- Frog doesn't talk like a weird old English gentleman in the DS re-release. What the heck, guys?

You said it, Lucca

The Long

There is nothing I could say about Chrono Trigger that hasn't already been said, so I won't even try. Chrono Trigger is widely considered to be the definitive JRPG, and I am inclined to agree with that. Five out of five stars, review over. 

...in all seriousness, odds are if you are reading this review you've played or at least heard of Chrono Trigger. If you haven't, then you really need to get on the ball and play this game RIGHT NOW. There's a good reason why it's so revered by fans even to this day. Chrono Trigger is an absolutely incredible experience from beginning to end, and also serves as perhaps the best entry point for anyone into JRPGS. The only downside I could see with that plan is that if this is the first JRPG you ever played, it would be hard for anything else to even compare.

But enough of me rambling vaguely; let's get into gritty specifics. 

Rude, dude. 

Chrono Trigger's story is one part whimsy, one part post-apocalyptic, and one part AWESOME. Ok, I don't know how "awesome" could be a part, but the point still stands: Chrono Trigger has an excellent story. While you could argue it doesn't exactly reach the emotional depths of games like Final Fantasy VI, it's such a cleverly written tale you can't help but love it, and the fact it literally exhumes charm probably doesn't hurt either.

It starts out simple: while attending a millennial fair, you (the mute protagonist "Chrono" [or "Brono" if you are GiantBomb]) mess up your sciency friend Lucca's teleporter and TRAVEL BACK IN TIME! After screwing up the timeline in a plot somewhat similar to Back to the Future (except with less mother/son creepy incest stuff) you have to set things right, only for things to go wrong again. Eventually you discover a rather shocking truth: in the year 1999, a creature called Lavos emerges from within the bowels of the planet and essentially blows everything up. It's up to you and your time-travelling pals from throughout history to find the truth behind Lavos, his origins, and how to stop him before he blows up the world. Pretty good stuff, eh?

My name is Gato/I have metal joints/Beat me up/And earn fifteen silver points! 

As a whole, the overarching story is reasonably compelling, but where Chrono Trigger shines is in its little, character driven moments. Your cast of characters is as diverse as as it weird: you have three "normal" people from your time, but you also pick up a robot, a cavewoman, an anthropomorphic frog, and even an optional bad guy turned good. What makes Chrono Trigger fascinating is the fact that each of these characters have deep and interesting backstories, which are often explained as you time travel around the world. I don't want to spoil anything in particular (though seriously...everybody's played this game) but visiting one particular villain as a child and realizing exactly why he's such a jerk was one of the most rewarding and incredible twists in the game. Because of the time-travel element, you can actually visit moments from character's pasts, finally seeing things the characters allude to throughout the whole story.

And don't even get me started on Lucca's optional visit to her past. That's "Cyan and the Phantom Train" levels of emotional insides-pulling. 

Oh bugger.

If there's only one real complaint I can lobby against the story, its that the protagonist (Chrono) is woefully underdeveloped. They went for the "silent protagonist" route here, which is a cheap trick used to have the player project themselves onto the character, and it works out...ok here. I mean, Chrono has a nice mom, I have a nice mom. Chrono has a cat, I had a cat. I'm feelin' it. But when compared to the other characters, who feel exceptionally fleshed out and interesting (with maybe the exception of Magus, though you do get a large chunk of his past revealed), Chrono is completely stale.

Not to mention a rather large twist at about the 3/4 mark involving Chrono completely shatters the idea of self projection onto the character and makes me wonder exactly what they were thinking with him. I mean, I liked the twist. It was shocking and there was no way I saw it coming. But in terms of blending narrative, gameplay, and player experience...it felt a bit out of place.

All this aside, I will say this final bit about the story: it does the little things right. Frog talking in old English even though nobody else in his time period does, and even he didn't talk in old English before he came a frog is a hilarious touch that might have not been intentional, but I don't care. Having Ozzie, the comical villain who looks more than a little bit like Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z, be defeated by a cat. Leaving Robo, because he's a robot, four hundred years in the past and then simply zipping forward and picking him up after his centuries-long task is complete. There are just too many fantastic, little things about Chrono Trigger that make it charming, heartbreaking, and captivating to mention. It isn't really some sweeping, broad melodrama, but it doesn't have to be. It's more like if Final Fantasy had a baby with Mario RPG, and I love it.

Oh Spekkio, you have beaten me far too many times. 

Beyond the story, the gameplay mechanics in Chrono Trigger are a blast. The first thing you'll notice when engaging in a battle is that it doesn't fade out into some side battle screen; when you see enemies while running around, touching them engages in a battle then and there. Enemies wander around during the battles, and their positions relative to each other affect certain area-of-effect moves your characters can pull off. While this isn't exactly novel now in a world where western action RPGs are the norm, for JRPGs past and present this concept of a hybrid battle system is unique. 

The system plays a lot like the SNES and PS1 Final Fantasy games: you have a bar that gradually fills (based on your Speed stat), and when it maxes out that character can take his or her turn. The enemies also have bars (which you don't see), so executing commands quickly and skillfully is key. The trick here is that while in most Final Fantasy games you have to order commands one at a time for each character, taking turns. Not so in Chrono Trigger! The other unique twist is the idea of Duel- and Triple-Techs. Essentially combining magic moves, as characters level up and learn new abilities they also learn ways to combine these abilities with those of other characters. For example, while Chrono and Frog will both learn moves involving slashes, having both characters ready to go at the same time will allow a combined X-Slash for much more damage. Things really get crazy with Triple-Techs, where all three party members unleash devastating magics/skills at the same time. Pretty cool.

Arial robot strike!

Perhaps my only complaint regarding the battles are that they tend to be too easy. If you aren't a MP hog and know how to ration it out (and use items to decrease costs), you can easily breeze through this game with your powerful abilities. I only died once during my playthrough, and that was against an optional boss that I hadn't bothered leveling for (or even equipping the right party members). While for the JRPG newbie it might provide a little difficulty, any vet of the genre will easily breeze through Chrono Trigger.

Another complaint one might lobby is the fact that Chrono Trigger is incredibly linear the first playthrough. Now, I'm not saying you don't have freedom. Yes, you technically can warp around time and do some weird stuff, but in truth the game is designed to send you down a straight path all the way until you get the flying time machine ship...thing. Once you hit that point there's a limited selection of side quests you can do right before the final dungeon. It actually reminded me a lot of how Final Fantasy X is set up, with the game nudging you along the right path until you get to the end and saying "Oh, right...nonlinear. Here, have some sidequests."

I'd normally complain about this (especially because Final Fantasy XIII does it poorly and it drives me crazy), but I really...can't. This is because Chrono Trigger is such a tightly designed system around its linear(esque) pathway. Story beats hit at exactly the right moment, the pacing such that you feel rewarded at exactly the right intervals with a big plot reveal or event. It's immaculately timed from beginning to end, fusing it's solid (if easy) gameplay with story elements to keep things rewarding. I really can't hate on it at all, because as an experience it's solid. And if a game is linear but the experience solid, then it worked. Chrono Trigger works. 

And oh man...the soundtrack...

Graphically, Chrono Trigger is delightful. Akira Toriyama (the artist behind Dragon Ball Z and the Dragon Quest games) is at his best here, with wacky and charming character designs that are translated perfectly into their 16-bit sprites. The game has a warm color pallet, even in the darker areas, and everything blends together exceptionally well. And while it does use some Mode-7 trickery, it never looks corny or forced (even the "space-car race"). It's rare that sprites can have both a wide range of emotions and look unique and great doing it, but Chrono Trigger is a cut above the rest in that department. 

If I only have one complaint it's that Ayla's character design looks a little stupid, but she's a cavewoman so...I guess I'll survive. Besides, Frog's general awesomeness makes up for it.

More music!

The soundtrack is exceptional, to say the very least. Many consider it the best video game soundtrack ever; I personally put it just inches behind Final Fantasy VI, but that is hardly an insult. Every song on the soundtrack is memorable, which is something you can rarely say for any album, video game or otherwise. What I especially enjoy is the shift in tones between time periods. In the prehistoric period the music is more chaotic and drum reliant, while as you travel forward in time it fits the unique themes of where you are, all the way up to the funky kickin' rock beats of the future. I just...can't describe it any more. Go find a playlist on youtube and listen to them all. Seriously. It's incredible. 

Yes, more. Get over it. 

Chrono Trigger is a bonified masterpiece. There's just no question about it. Even today, where JRPGs are a dime a dozen, Chrono Trigger still stands out amongst the throng as the definitive JRPG experience. I replayed it on my original Super Nintendo cart a few months ago in preparation for a review, just to see if it really held up when compared to modern games. Guess what? It absolutely does. There's a reason they can keep re-releasing this game on the DS and PS3 and Wii Virtual Console and even the freaking iPhone without making any changes: Chrono Trigger is solid to this day. And not just solid, fantastic.

As I said before, if you haven't played Chrono Trigger and you are reading this blog...what is wrong with you? Clearly you love video games, how on earth did you miss this game?! Run (don't walk) to your local gaming store, or to your PS3 or Wii or iPhone or whatever the heck you own and get this game. Seriously. You will not regret it. 

I already gave a star score, but what the heck...here it is again: FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS. 

I liked it so much I made this awesome perler bead creation for my wall. See more at my wife's blog. 

Bonus: The most badass scene in the game.

You Don't Know Jack

The Short


Pros
- Same irreverent, silly, weird trivia questions as the original series
- Funny and entertaining while still making you think about some pretty tough stuff
- Four players is a hoot, and with the changes everybody gets to play on every question
- Fast paced episodes mean you can go from one to the next very easily
- "Wrong answers of the game" always keep you on your toes
- Cheap; went for $20 it's first week shipped

Cons
- Since the questions aren't randomized, once you finish an episode you can't ever play it again
- Replaying episodes for achievements sucks
- Single player, this game is pretty boring and makes you feel lame
- Some of the jokes can come off as a little grating. The puppet one, for example.
- The "Jack Attack" at the end pretty much renders the entire game previous irrelevant in terms of earning money

Ready for trivia?

The Long

You Don't Know Jack was a pretty big series back in the 90s, with it's style of inappropriate humor mixed with some actually very solid trivia questions appealing. It had that good mix of stupid humor, smart humor, and smart questions that worked, and since you could play it competitively four-player that was just icing on the cake. They tried to make an actual game show about it on TV, but it flopped pretty hard and You Don't Know Jack was put into retirement.

Now, several years after the last iteration, Jellyvision is trying to bring You Don't Know Jack back for a newer generation. They got the original announcer, the bald upper half of Jack's head (now CGI), Screws, and a freaking boatload of trivia questions (and if it isn't enough, the DLC is cheap and there's tons of it). So what are you waiting for?

Different modes are constantly mixing things up

The core concept of You Don't Know Jack is simple: ask trivia questions. The trick is in the way they do it. They constantly drop weird references, explain bizarre things in silly ways, and just generally go out of their way to be both funny and confusing in order to throw you off track. Half of the game is just figuring out exactly what is being asked, and then figuring out the answer is a whole different ballpark. There's trick questions thrown in the mix that also can mess you up, as well as a "Wrong Answer of the Day" concept I'll go into in a minute.

The biggest improvement for me over the previous Jack games is the fact everybody gets to answer every question. In the previous game people buzzed in and guessed, one at a time. Now there's a timer and all four people answer at once, revealing who was right when the timer runs out. The faster you answer the more cash is at stake, to either gain or lose, so stalling to the last minute if you don't know an answer is certainly an option.

The questions are silly while still being intelligent and difficult. 

They mix up the regular old "answer the multiple choice question" idea with some variations. DisOrDat takes the current lowest scoring player and has them pick whether or not a word on screen (presented in rapid succession) is one thing or another (for example, a Pope or a Brittney Spears Song). There's also the ending "Jack Attack," where you have to match a word with another one based on a theme, and it's pretty much based entirely on player speed. It goes a long way to make it not just silly trivia the time, and it's appreciated.

Wrong answers of the game also mix stuff up. 

Speaking of which, the "Wrong Answer of the Game" is another great new addition. Every episode has a "sponsor" for a totally off-the-wall product, and one question has a wrong answer that's relevant to that product. Pick it and you win tons of bonus money. For example, if the sponsor had something to do with vampires, keeping an eye out for wrong answers with the word "Blood" in them might be a good idea. It makes you pause and decide if the gamble is worth it, because if it's just a regular wrong answer you are out the money.

With friends, Jack is a hoot. The humor hits much more frequently than it misses (though it does miss from time to time) and with a group it can be very easy to do the "just one more episode" thing. It's a great party game that can be played quickly, since each episode is only about fifteen minutes long.

The questions are easily the highlight. 

So what sucks about You Don't Know Jack? Well, not a whole lot to be honest, but there are still a few hangups. The biggest one is if you don't have any friends (or buy the DS version), because playing Jack alone is just...not very fun. Yeah, you still get the funny questions or whatever but the main point of this game is to be played with friends. Playing with yourself (hur hur, irreverent humor) is lame and unfun, and you won't be getting the full value of the game if you do.

Another issue is the episodes. You get over 90 in the game, so that's a boatload of trivia questions, but since each episode never changes once you beat one you essentially can't replay it (unless you want to cheat and smoke all your friends). 90 episodes is a lot, though, so it isn't that bad, it just means this game has literally zero replay value. You can buy DLC packs for super cheap, however, if you really need more content. 

There's a lot of content, but once you burn through it you are done. 

Lastly, it still has the weird balance problems of the first Jack, the biggest one being the Jack Attack at the end is basically what determines the winner, not whoever did best on the previous 10 questions. Since each Jack Attack question is worth so much (to either gain or lose), it is very easy to pull ahead fast or lose it all at the end, especially in a close game. It's kind of lame, but that's how Jack has always been, I guess. 

Also the PC version doesn't have online multiplayer, and playing online with strangers is dumb since they all are just looking it up on GameFaqs. So play with people you know.

The Jack Attack can completely turn a game around. 

You Don't Know Jack, kind of like Deathspank, relies entirely on its humor to sell itself. So if you are the kind of person who enjoys this sort of thing (dig up a few questions or watch a Let's Play to get a feel for it) than You Don't Know Jack is certain to entertain you, especially if you have like-minded friends. Considering the game retailed at $30 and is now easy to pick up at around $10-15, I'd say that's pretty much a no-brainer if you had any fondness for the older games or are looking to dive in for the first time. 

Just know that this is 100% trivia. That's the game. You aren't shooting aliens or stabbing dudes or anything. I don't know why you'd think that, but I figured I should bring it up just in case. 

I personally think this game is a riot, and was absolutely worth the $20 I spent on it. We played it a lot and only got through half of the episodes, so unless you and your friends are total trivia nuts it'll still maintain its good value. Give it a shot! You might find you are smarter than you think (but not smarter than me, because I'm a You Don't Know Jack god, ha ha!")

Four out of five stars. 

Whoops, spoiled this answer for you. 

Plants vs Zombies

The Short


Pros
- Addicting twist on the tower defense genre
- Easy to learn but very difficult to master
- Dozens of plants to choose from
- Charming aesthetic, from the zombies to the plants to the kickin' soundtrack
- A metric butt-ton of game modes including survival, minigames, puzzles, zen garden, and more
- Seriously, this game has more content than three $60 retail games
- Crazy Dave is awesome. The ending song is awesome.
- Horrendously addicting

Cons
- Those damned bungee zombies.
- Unlocking stuff costs lots of money, which lead to some awful microtransactions on the iOS version
- Co-op / Vs modes only available on the PSN and XBLA version
- "Create a Zombie" only available on the PC Game of the Year version
- WHERE THE CRAP IS PLANTS VS ZOMBIES 2?!

If' there's anything zombies hate, it's photosynthesis

The Long

Let's just get this out of the way up front: Plants vs Zombies is pretty much my wife's most favorite video game ever. She's beaten it all the way through at least six times, maybe more since she has it on her iPod touch now. We own this game on every system known to man (except PSN, because we have it on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and XBLA) and for some reason neither of us have gotten bored of it yet. Yes, I'm talking about a tower defense game that's grid-based, where plants battle zombies. Really.

Though it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. PopCap is pretty much rolling in fat cash (and is still an independent developer...so wild) at this point. These are the guys who invented Bejeweled, ok? They also made the Zuma, Bookworm, and tons of other simple, addicting games. Which is why when I first heard of Plants vs Zombies I shrugged it off. Bejeweled? You mean that game my mom plays? Please. 

Zombies also hate chlorophyll. 

It wasn't until we booted it up during a boring evening on vacation that we realized the truth: Plants vs Zombies is freaking amazing. I remember Destructoid gave it a 10/10 and I thought they'd lost their freaking minds. Well guess what, it was totally justified. Plants vs Zombies is an addicting, content rich tower defense game that is both extremely accessible and immensely deep. And here you thought it was just a simple, casual game. 

Plants vs Zombies doesn't do anything particularly new (aside from being freaking incredible) to the tower defense genre. You are given a 9x7 grid (your lawn, though eventually you go to the backyard pool and even on the roof) which you can plant anything on. All plants (except one "super" plant) only take one spot, so you can essentially have a maximum of 63 plants. Zombies come in from the right to individual lanes, never swapping unless (again) you use a particular plant to force them to bounce around like that. You plant your attacking plants on the left and try to kill the zombies before they reach your brains on the left (safely hidden inside the house). It's extremely simple; even my mother could figure it out.

Don't tell my mother I bad-mouthed her in my review. I love you mom!

To plant stuff you need "suns," which you gather by either planting sunflowers (with their adorable grins) or picking them up during daytime levels (which means they were literally dropped from the sun). Having to click on suns keeps it interactive, even during the boring beginning stages of the levels, where you are trying to gain a steady income as fast as possible. After that you have basic pea shooters which will slowly fire on advancing zombies, wall-nuts (which also have adorable grins, just look at them!) that block the zombie's paths, and more. The game keeps introducing a new plant nearly every level, which in turn adds a new strategy to attempt. The pacing is exactly perfect, and by the end you'll be juggling nine different plants, fighting off tons of zombies, and it'll all be completely intuitive. IT may look overwhelming at first, but Plants vs Zombies hits the sweet spot: it's never too hard, and it's never boring. And it rewards you just enough to make you keep on playing for hours and hours on end.

You go from "single, shuffling idiot" to "28 Days Later" pretty quickly

PopCap's other games had the benefit of being straight puzzlers with no determinable goal other than to waste time, meaning they only got old when you were finished with them. Plants vs Zombies, on the other hand, has a definite "end" to it (after maybe 4-5 hours of zombie-pruning mayhem) which would have slowed other developers. They might have just called it good (4-5 hours for a $10-$15 is still a good deal), or maybe have thrown in some junk side content or tacked on competitive multiplayer just for kicks. But this is freaking PopCap, so they go nuts. (or dare I say...Wall-nuts?)

This game has more bonus content than any game ever made in the existence of video games. This is not even an exaggeration. Right after you beat the main game, you can go back and play through it again, but this time with Crazy Dave (your lunatic neighbor) picking your first three plants for you (and often picking garbage, which adds to the challenge). You can collect pots of plants in the single player mode now that you've beaten the game, which are put in your zen garden and are raised to either sell or collect. You have more seed slots to unlock for levels, tons more plants and plant upgrades, and more areas for your zen garden. You have somewhere around 25-30 minigames, all of which are excellent and unique (Zombie Bejeweled is one of my favorites). You have wave based survival modes on all the different landscapes. You have a puzzle mode where you play as the zombies trying to get through the plants. You have a vase-smashing puzzle game that can be quite the challenge (both the puzzles and urn levels have a bunch of pre-set levels as well as infinite modes, and the survival mode can be infinite too). 

All this in a game that started life at a $15 price tag. Normal $60 games don't give this much crap out!

Hecks yes, Beghouled is rad. 

I'll say it again: this game is extremely addicting. The gameplay is tight, has tons of variety, and the tons of modes are just icing on the cake. All this content would be useless if the underlying game sucked, and it most certainly doesn't. You thought a 9x7 grid would mean the game was gimped and stupid? Well you are gimped and stupid, valued reader! Because this game is better than any other tower defense game ever made. Yes, I just brought that to the table. Prove me wrong, dear reader (in the comments, please :P)!

There are a few nitpicks I have. PopCap keeps releasing this dang thing on any platform that can even remotely support it, often adding stuff each time. For example, the XBLA Version, while suffering from not having mouse controls (which it still works quite well on a controller, by the way) does add full co-op support for every part of the game, which is really cool because I could finally play alongside my wife. It also adds a vs mode that's more like a competitive puzzle game, where one person plays as the plants and the other the zombies. It's pretty fun too, but neither of these modes are on any other versions besides the PSN and XBLA version.

The same goes for "Create a Zombie" mode, which is admittedly just a gimmick bonus, but that's only in the Game of the Year version on the PC. Sad times.

The flavor text for the plants and zombies is hilarious too (screenshot from iOS version)

The iOS and Android versions also have an annoyance: in-game microtransactions. Unlike the PC/XBLA/PSN versions, the minigames on iOS and Android require in-game currency to buy. Which you can earn pretty quickly if you know how to manipulate the Zen Garden, but the amount of cash required is still astronomical. It gives you the offer to buy in game coins for $1 increments, which I suppose is fair since the game is $10 on XBLA/PSN/PC and the iOS version is $3 (except I was an early adapter and paid $6), but the whole microtransaction thing still bugs me. I really hate it, in case you were wondering, but in this instance it doesn't do enough to damage the experience. It does mean most of the content is locked by a money-gate, though, so keep that in mind.

Lastly, the DS version looks way the crap worse than the other versions. Even the iOS/Android versions look way better (they technically run at a higher resolution than the XBLA/PSN versions, though they are scrunched down a little to fit on the screen). I suppose I should finally finally note that I consider the iPad/Android Tablet version of this game to be, by far, the best way to play the game. Picking up suns with touch is intuitive and excellent, the touch controls flawless in every way, which makes this easily a killer app for both iPhones and iPads (and Android phones and Android Tablets).

There is seriously so much crap to unlock (screenshot from iOS version)

I'm pretty sure you can guess what my closing remarks are going to be. Let me put it this way: this game was selling for $2 on sale on Steam the other day. TWO DOLLARS. It's on portable devices for freaking $3. You can buy it anywhere else for $10. You can even play a rather extensive demo for free in your web browser right now on PopCap's website. This game is insanely cheap and straight up amazing. I'm pretty sure you can afford it, so what are you waiting for? Go out there and buy it! And if you are thinking to yourself, "hmm, I wonder if this game is worth $10 or if I should wait for another Steam sale?" then you need to get your life in order and freaking go buy it this very second. I give you my personal Nathan guarantee that this game is worth every penny. I have yet to see someone I've recommended this game to come back disappointed. Plus, your kids can play it! And it's a way better game to have them play than that crappy Angry Birds game, let me tell you that much.

Make Plants vs Zombies 2 PopCap. You can have all my money. But while I'm waiting, I'm going to go beat Plants vs Zombies on my iPhone again. 

Five out of five starflowers. 

More like a billion out of five starflowers.