The crown jewel of our visit to the EA Mobile side of town was getting some actual face time with the iOS version of Plants vs Zombies 2. In a nutshell, it’s Plants vs Zombies ($0.99) but more. If you’re familiar with the original, you’ll be able to instantly pick up and play the sequel. There’s new plants, loads of new levels, tons of new zombies, and a lot of content to wade through. Check out the video where I play an easy early level, then totally fail at a very difficult end level:
The crux of this game is going to be how you pay for it. EA was holding strong on all the microtransactions being incredibly optional, but that’s a hard pill to swallow when a game is balanced with IAP of any kind even in the equation. Even if the IAP is truly optional, it seems inevitable to hit those difficulty bumps and feel like this is where you’re “meant" to spend some money- Or, why bother re-trying when you can just drop some cash.
I’m really excited to see how it feels when we can actually download it, which should be very soon.
Three and a half stars is way too low. For a marble shooter, Sparkle is right up there with Zuma as the best in the genre.
Marking a marble shooter down because it's "repetitive" is like giving an arcade game a bad score because it's "twitchy". It's supposed to be repetitive!
A review is just an opinion by one person. Complaining about a review score makes no sense.
I haven't played this one yet, but the original Sparkle was a solid 5 star game for me.
Agreeing with Morpheus. This game is by far the best marble shooter I've played. I recognize the review is an opinion, but it is underplaying the music and the innovation.
The music is freaking fantastic, from the same guy who did Fez and BIT.TRIP Runner 2. It reminded me at times of John Williams' Harry Potter and Danny Elfman's Edward Scissorhands. Probably my favorite iOS soundtrack aside from Sworcery.
They've done a lot with Sparkle 2 to minimize the repetitive feel of a marble shooter. You unlock new game modes and equippable abilities at a great pace that made me constantly want to play just a few more levels so I could see what the next unlock was. The equippable items are exciting and there's more depth to the system than the review allows. You have four item slots and each slot has a unique pool of four equippable items (plus the ability to equip nothing in that slot). That means 256 combinations of full equipment and 625 combinations if you include the ability to remove equipment. The abilities are cool and let you tailor your launcher to match your play style.
The game managed to feel fresh throughout thanks to a great difficulty curve, new modes to play, and the regular introduction of new power ups (different from equipment). Power ups are the name of the game and you get one for every combo of 3 matches... it feels awesome to get your combo chain up to 25+ matches.
The game just feels good to play. The polish on the visual effects, art, music, and gameplay is top notch. This is easily the best marble shooter I've ever played. I highly recommend it if you are a fan of the genre or if you have never tried the genre on touchscreen before (I had previous played with a mouse and a 360 controller, it was a much better experience on touchscreen).