Mini-Review: Farmville 2

Yeah, that right, the Facebook game juggernaut that everyone including your grandma and mom (and all her friends at work) clicking on tomatoes before they withered away is back with a sequel.  Is it actually fun, or is it full of evil freemium game design straight from the mouth of the Evil Lord Zyngis?

Well the first thing you'll notice is the face full of 3D graphics the game throws at you.  It looks nice!  Tomatoes sway on the vine with their ripeness, and Zynga's previously ugly and bland character design actually looks kind of appealing when you apply 3 dimensions to it.  Character animation is pretty good too, everything is appropriately happy and bouncy.  Really everything is aces in the graphics department, which is quite an improvement over the mostly ugly, barely animated original.

It's the gameplay where Farmville 2 falls short.  It's evil. As a matter of fact, it's probably more even than it's original incarnation.  When you begin playing, the game takes any and every opportunity to get you to pester your friends about it. Feast your eyeballs on this pop-up dialog:



If you give the game permission to post to your wall whenever it wants (no doubtably annoying your friends with messages about lost baby goats and withering crops) which, if your okay with that (you jerk), is no big deal.  There's just one major flaw.  That box has no way to close it.  No "X" or anything.  You have to hit okay.  You can then close out the Facebook pop-up that comes up afterward, but that's not the point.  This game is actively trying to trick you, and that, my friends, is pure evil.

Besides that the game is just about the same.  There's no longer energy, which is good because energy is lame, but there is water.  How does that work, you ask? Well, you need it to water your crops and it recharges over time so-- okay it's the same as energy.  It's the same game, with a few tweaks and new cute  3D graphics.  Your success or failure in the world of Farmville 2 will hedge on how often you annoy your friends or neighbors and the game will do whatever it can (including trying to trick you) to get you to do so.  Other than that, it's clicking on crops and animals.  It's pure evil, the whole game is a nefarious plot designed to get you to advertise it for free, and spend money to progress because the actually gameplay is just waiting, and waiting is inherently not fun. Sooooo...

PXT Mini-Verdict: Don't. Just Don't.

Hopefully, Farmville 2 doesn't take off like the original so this evil can be stopped.  It probably doesn't matter though, because then Zynga will just do this:

[caption id="attachment_3433" align="aligncenter" width="270"] ...from Penny Arcade, of course.[/caption]