Knowing that wombats' dump is little stackable cubes was one of the fun facts I learned at school (it was either a rhetorical proof for or against the existence of God; I forget which). This knowledge comes in handy for understanding the game Hardhat Wombat, coming from George Fan (of Plants Vs. Zombies fame), with Andy Hull (of programmer on Spelunky fame). Out later this year, it's a combination puzzle-platformer and conscruction game in which you play a wombat, wearing a hard hat, who constructs increasingly complex things out of his own feces. That is no way to make a skyscraper, wombat.
]]>I’m fairly sure that zombies are the perfect video game enemies. They’re relentless, for one thing, happily chomping their way through anyone who gets in their path. The undead are faceless as well, so you don’t feel too bad about escorting them back to their graves. Yet they can be poignant, dramatic reminders of friends and family that meant a lot to characters too, depending on who the shambling corpse used to be. If I was going to hire any enemy for a game, I’d hire a zombie. Then they’d eat my brain. That’s why I hired them! So to celebrate our very iconic, vitality-challenged friends, I've put together a list of my favourite zombie games.
]]>A bit later than planned, but we're back once again for another edition of The RPS Time Capsule, in which the RPS Treehouse undergoes a collective mind-melting experiment to pick their favourite, bestest best games from a specific year to be preserved and saved until the end of time. This month, we've shifted our game preservation gaze to 2009, so read on below to find out which games made the cut, and which have been cast off into the eternal games bin.
]]>Good news: EA have announced Plants Vs. Zombies 3.
Bad news: it's free-to-play again, and microtransactions were a blight on PvZ 2.
Nullifying news: but this time it's just a mobile game so who even cares. Ian Arts, you are a monster.
After the microtransaction-muddled Plants vs. Zombies 2 and the I've-heard-they're-good-but-they're-not-what-I-want multiplayer Garden Warfare spin-offs, I had hoped EA might return to plain ol' PC PvZ. Sadly not, it seems.
]]>The creator of Plants Vs Zombies returns after nine years with Octogeddon - an arcade-inspired game of cephalopodic mayhem. One angry octopus takes on the world in his vengeful quest to destroy all that humans hold dear: large tourist attractions. Here's wot I think.
]]>The designer behind the massively popular Plants vs. Zombies, George Fan, has opened a new studio and left his old toys behind. With the gang at All Yes Good, he's working on a full version of Octogeddon, a game he started during a game jam. It's a common concept: you play as a giant mutant octopus, growing weird new fightlimbs.
]]>Hey, good to see ya, how ya doin'? Take a seat anyplace you like - we got window seats, we got booths, we got stools over here at the counter. I'd keep shy of the table just at the back there - it's reserved, on a strictly unofficial basis, and the guy who plants hisself there most days ain't exactly particular about whose keister he puts his boot into, if you catch my drift.
Now, what'll it be?
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I’m struggling to think of a game’s name that has gone from being one of eliciting such joy to such uninterest. The flagship title of PopCap’s collapse from astonishingly successful casual game developer to the fragmented remains left behind after an EA-destructo-buyout, Plants Vs Zombies was once a cult PC delight, making tower defence accessible to all. Now it’s a third-person shooter or something.
]]>What I'd wanted next from Plants vs. Zombies was a tower defence sequel not all guffed up with mobile microtransaction-y stuff. What EA gave us was a third-person multiplayer shooter, Garden Warfare. I'm sure they thought they knew something we didn't. They still do, as EA today announced Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 [official site].
The sequel will take the action to suburbia, bringing new characters and weapons and whatnot. And an orange who doesn't seem at all perturbed that he's partially flayed.
]]>Battlefield: Hardline is mere weeks away from being shown off for the first time, and Battlefield 4 just got microtransactions. What's an already overwhelmed Battlefield neophyte to do? Why, dive into a different Battlefield altogether, of course. I mean, I guess that's rationale behind EA's decision to make BF3 100 percent free as part of Origin's On The House program, and - while things haven't exactly been sunshine and butterflies on the battle-est of fields lately - I won't look a gift tank in the turret. I feel like that would be a very, very poor idea under any circumstance, virtual or not.
]]>The PC release date trailer for green-thumbed shooter Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare is utterly preposterous. Of course it is, you might be thinking, it's a video promoting a third-person shooter Plants Vs Zombies spin-off. The trailer doesn't show the actual game though, choosing instead to put the Origin logo front and centre. This is a video in which a zombie logs into Origin, has a conversation with Origin in which the store offers to load up a Match 3 game, and then finds out that Garden Warfare is due for release on June 24th. The good news about the delayed launch is that we won't have to speculate as to whether the game was designed to allow for the introduction of microtransactions at a later date - they're arriving next week.
]]>This week's Humble Weekly sale is a PopCap bundle, but with an added twist: EA are giving 100% of their cut to charity. Two charities, in fact, between which you can choose your split: the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and The Melanoma Research Alliance which specifically fights skin cancer.
Pay more than $1 and you'll get a copy of Peggle (download size: one Peggle), zen-like match three puzzler Bejeweled 3, word puzzler Bookworm Deluxe, and two other games. Pay more than $6 and you'll also get Plants vs. Zombies, Zuma's Revenge and Peggle Nights. You'll even get Origin and Steam keys for each one.
Maybe this is Kindness Week and we only just realised?
]]>Happy face: PopCap's Plants vs Zombies 2 will apparently arrive this Summer. I love PvZ. I want more PvZ.
Worried face: PopCap now belong to EA, who want to put microtransactions in everything they can. I'm crossing fingers, toes, unmentionables and internal organs that PvZ2 can somehow escape this disease and just be a lovely, complete little game of its own.
]]>Best of all the news: Popcap have announced Plants vs Zombies 2. Worst of all the news: We won't get to play the vegetation vs vegetative tower defence sequel until late Spring next year. Medium news: basically no details apart from that and "hordes of new Plant and Zombie types." The press release makes up for it by saying "and mulch more" though.
]]>You know the phrase, "more money than sense"? PopCap have an awful lot of money...
Plants Vs. Zombies continues to be a sensation on every format it touches - I've heard that it's soon coming out for digital calculators and answer-phones - which is presumably bringing in enough money to pay enough people to create something as spectacularly silly as the latest... trailer? Video? Proof that there's something in the air conditioning at their headquarters?
]]>I'm very, very disappointed in all of you. This news broke yesterday and NOBODY TOLD ME.
Spotted at Toyfair by Kotaku was… was… I can barely say it. It's just too beautiful to be true. Was…
Was a Plants vs Zombies boardgame. At last, the divided PC/boardgames mind of RPS is united.
]]>Rock, Paper, Shotgun is always first with the news. Apart from when we're last. For instance, this Plants Vs. Zombies garden ornament collection first appeared in March last year. But I don't care, because I just saw it for the first time, and no one else I've shown has seen it before, and it's gorgeous. So there. They're the work of a collection of people at Californian-based Moose Studios Pottery. You can see lots of individual photos on their Facebook page, which appears to be as official a website as they have. If you're in Clovis CA, why not see if they have any left? (Thanks to Tina K. for the link.)
]]>Bless. As we know, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is bringing all kinds of apocalyptic change to Azeroth, and what could be more apocalyptic than a quest recreating PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies? The new Peacebloom vs Ghouls quest can be found in the Hillsbrad Foothills, and is such an absurdly detailed recreation of PvZ (albeit with only 6 plants) that the whole thing must have been done with PopCap's consent. Aww. A video of the level by RPS's own eager commenter TotalBiscuit can be found beneath the jump.
]]>That was quick. Following on from yesterday's news that the Dancing Zombie is being removed from Plants Vs Zombies due to the legal wroth of the Jackson family, the muddy-funsters at PC Gamer reveal the new dancing zombie, which basically looks like I did when I had hair and went to the perpetually-70s-stuck nightclubs in Stafford. And let's celebrate this momentous event with an entirely gratuitous linking to Zombina & The Skeletones...
]]>Remember those Michael Jackson-looking zombies from Plants Vs. Zombies? Not anymore, you don't. The MTV Multiplayer blog has an announcement from PopCap which confirms that the Dancing Zombie is undergoing a redesign following complaints from the Michael Jackson estate, who wanna be startin' something.
]]>Just catching up with the Internet chitter-chatter suggests that a couple of announcements may be incoming. Perhaps most predictably is that following Popcap sending a Save The Date August 2nd 2010 with a zombie hand attached people are speculating that Plants Versus Zombies 2 is going to be announced. More unusual is the news that leaked out in advance of next week's San Diego Comic Con is that the EA's panel will feature “a brand new, Sci-Fi Action-RPG based on the DNA of Spore.” VG247 speculate this could be "Darkspore", which EA trademarked earlier in the year. This will have to go some to actually impress people, but you can see the logic in doing an action-RPG based on some of the still-brilliant character-creation technology. I'm at San Diego, so will try and bring you an update straight from the con floor, unless I'm lying, passed out on the con-floor. Which is far from unprecedented.
]]>Having spent all Thursday working on my World of Love presentation and Friday actually doing it, I'm catching up with the gaming Internet. Hence, seeing Kotaku linking on Thursday to Laura Shigihara's performing the song she wrote and performed in Plants Vs Zombies, There's A Zombie On Your Lawn. Ah, 2009 flashback. 'Tis very cute, and you'll find it below...
]]>Except not as sexy as that sounds. There's a webgame version of Plants Versus Zombies available. It features three game modes - 14 levels of Adventure, Endless Survival and Vasebreaker - with 12 plans and 6 zombie types. And a new zombie type. Crikey. The biggest problem for me it actually shares with the new game. I lost my save, so would have to play through all the tediously easy early adventure levels to get to the actually interesting challenge modes. But for newcomers to the game, it's a fine place to newly come.
]]>Oh God. Thanks to the forum, I'm advert-blogging. Which can only mean one of two things: i) Post-Darkfall review I've totally lost it or ii) it's an awesome advert that needs immortalisation. Or maybe both. Anyway, Plants Versus Zombies has a new ad-campaign. It's been seen over at the Penny Arcade - maybe they did it? If so, well done you, Mr Penny and Mr Arcade - and is well worth nosing at. And it's under the cut because it's too long to go above it.
]]>Inspired by my recent plea for Zeno Clash/Garry's Mod mash-ups, veteran RPS reader Dartt revisits his own past glory to delightfully strange effect. A bigger version awaits you upon a click. The tragic absence of Tall-Nut aside, most excellent work, sir.
]]>We have all played Plants vs Zombies by now. And we all have a favourite plant, right? Maybe it's the triple pea plant. Maybe it's the sweetcorn catapult that lobs hunks of ghoul-paralysing butter. Maybe it's the impressively apocalyptic Jalapeño pepper. For me, there is no question. Tall-nut is my super-unit, the answer to all my problems, the nemesis of all zombies. My one true love.
]]>PopCap's latest, Plants Vs. Zombies, certainly won our attention with its lovely promotional music video, and drew us in further with an intriguing and hilarious trailer. But what about the game itself? Can it deliver on the giant pile of cute promises? Find out wot I think below, in Rock, Paper, Shotgun's review.
]]>Plants Vs. Zombies is due out in only two weeks now, and we'd love to tell you all about it, but mmmmphhh mmmpphhh mmmpppphh. Every time we try someone from PopCap appears behind us and stuffs a rag in our mouths. However, be sure to be here on 5th May when we'll have the definitive review. Why definitive? Because we're arrogant like that. Meanwhile, there's a brand new trailer to enjoy, and an opportunity to make your very own zombie.
]]>I can't tell you how crappy a day I've had. From stomach bug to exploding graphics cards, it's been a stinker. So I would like to loudly declare the complete magical happiness that PopCap's announcement has brought me. Plants Vs. Zombies looks like it will be PopCap's interpretation of a tower defence game, but details at this point are scarce. What's not scarce is a gorgeous song to accompany the news, with an adorable singing sunflower backed by a chorus of zombies. Who we don't want on our lawn. Now with video below.
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