PopCap Hits Volume 2
Developer: PopCap
Publisher: PopCap
Release Date: Out Now
Players/Online features: 1-4 players.
Words By:

Four games for the price of one could be considered an incredible bargain—If only the games were better. The games cater for 1-4 players (Feeding Frenzy 2 and Heavy Weapon), 1 player for Zuma and Plants versus Zombies, and here's a little blurb on each one.

Zuma is a popular pattern matching game where you control a stone frog that shoots coloured bubbles at a line of coloured bubbles moving along a track before it gets to the end. Making a line of three or more bubbles of the same colour causes the group to disappear. There is very little more to be said about this. The Aztec aesthetic is as simple as it needs to be, the gameplay is simple, compulsive, but ultimately dull.

Heavy Weapon is a very simple two dimensional shooter where the tank you control rolls along the bottom of the screen shooting down enemy planes. Unlike the other games, this does not have the same clever cutesy appeal or clever gameplay dynamic. It's an utterly forgettable old-school 2D shooter.

Feeding Frenzy 2 is a modern take on the Mattel Intellivision classic Shark! Shark! It puts you in the position of a small fish floating around a spatially-unlikely two dimensional section of the sea, where you swim around eating other fishes smaller than your fish and avoiding large fish that can eat you. The more fish you eat, the bigger your fish grows enabling your fish to eat larger fishes, and so on until your fish grows to its maximum size, the level ends, and you start all over again. A fun little game for a couple of minutes but becomes very repetitive after a while.

Easily the most captivating of the four is Plants versus Zombies. It is a basic tower defence game, where you protect a home from marauding cartoony zombies stomping through the front yard using aggressive gardening. Planting different sort of plants that shoot seeds, or obstruct zombies, or sunflowers that generate more sun icons that enable you to plant more plants. PvZ sounds silly but is deceptively clever and addictive, for a while at least.

That really is all there is to say about the games. They don't set the world alight but they are harmless. At a push, they are excellent introductions to games for those who are unfamiliar, and if you enjoyed PopCap Hits then it’s more of the same, only not as good. The impatient among you may have skipped ahead and saw the score may be wondering given all this, why the score is so harsh. The idea of the title feels like a method for PopCap to cash in on the console market, but without making any effort to do so. How can they justify the price tag (averaging around £15 online) for three bland games and one that is just adequate, particularly bearing in mind that there are cheaper/free games available online that can be played on a laptop or smart phone that have more to offer. In summary, this title is as harmless as it is pointless.


Best Bits

- i>Plants versus Zombies is fun while the joke lasts.
- Easily digestible for those who have never picked up a joypad before.
Worst Bits

- Feels like a cynical ploy on the part of PopCap to harness the console market.

by: Jason Rainbird

Copyright © Gamecell 2011