Blog #5- Kelsey

Oh, Plants vs. Zombies! I've actually been playing this game for a over a year now. Both of my brothers played it and I finally caved and gave it a shot and started playing. It has now become a family addiction in my household. My brothers play it, I play it, even my sister and my mom play it. I've finished the story mode twice, most of the mini-games, all of the puzzle, and about half of the survival games. I'm just stuck on getting the last few achievements I need which drives me crazy. So, I suppose that makes one wonder why this game is such a huge hit and how such a variety of gamers, from my brothers who are both rather 'hard-core' and into the intense first-person shooters and what not, to myself who is more into console RPGs like Legend of Zelda or the Final Fantasy series, to my mom who is a very casual gamer at best, can all enjoy this game? I think there are several factors. For one- it's funny. I mean, seriously? Who comes up with that? Plant a garden to save your home brains from the zombies. And the ending song never fails to crack me up. Two- It's got a great skill range, since the game gets progressively more difficult you get more challenged as you play, and with a variety of mini games and survival challenges to try your hand at also you can get quite a bit of playtime out of it. Three- You don't need any real skills to play it. Point and click. Admittedly you have to develop a strategy to best defend your yard/pool/roof, but it's not hard to pick up on the basics of how to play the game. I think it's really impressive that this rather simple game from PopCap (who does many of the addictive online games people play) has become such a phenomenon, existing not only online, but has been ported to all of the major consoles as well. Personally, I play through Steam, which is great because I can play anywhere on my laptop, then save my data to Steam and pick up where I left on my desktop.