What Killed the Plants vs Zombies Franchise?

plants vs zombies is one of the most well-known tower defense games of all time it's well-known for implementing the use of lanes instead of having the enemies simply follow a path and this led to an entire sub-genre of the tower defense genre but it's impossible to disagree that plants vs zombies has without a doubt lessened in popularity over the years it fell off but we really don't know the full story milkman steve please go away oh okay so what killed plants vs zombies well not exactly while ea definitely had a negative impact producing pvz2 that

game was still fairly well received so while they most definitely played a part in the eventual downfall ea themselves aren't the single direct cause of it but to figure out what ruined plants vs zombies we have to first discuss what brought the series to such a high standing in the first place and that all starts with the first pvz game plans vs zombies was first released on the 5th of may 2009 and this game still holds up as a masterpiece to this day every single one of the 49 plants are each unique each and every

one having a different look and feel from every other one of the 48 plants in the game and the way each one works off of each other is just superb i believe that a large factor for its success has to be the wide variety of systems you could play it on while it started as a pc game plants vs zombies has several console ports as well as a mobile port and the mobile port is what really made it take off as it's completely free for anyone to play you just have to watch ads the menus

in all versions of the game fit the style well featuring a lot of greystones to fit the theme of zombies and while my favorite ui has to be the one from the pc release of the game since everything's right in front of you and there's no unnecessary menu navigation the ports all have that planters of zombies vibe to them and nothing looks out of place starting the adventure mode shows an opening cutscene of what's next to come and it hypes up the player and gets them excited to see more of the game then you're put

here there's a singular lane of grass that separates the zombies from you and the game teaches you the fundamentals of how to collect sun and place down plans and throughout the course of the following levels the game opens lane after lane until the full map is available the progression in these first few levels teaches you everything you need to know about how to play the game but it also leaves the player coming back for more and even after these first few introductory stages the gameplay loop continues to be packed with content with nearly every level

giving you a brand new plan to try out and learning how to utilize each plant to the best of its ability leads to a lot of fun tinkering and that constant stream of content is what makes playing the game for the first time completely unmatched although i will say after beating the game at least 10 times over the years the general gameplay loop of place sunflower place attacking plant place nut then you beat the zombies yay definitely gets boring after doing it for so many years but the game is ready for that so every time

you start to get bored the game ends up changing the general loop of things for the fifth level of every world the game chooses to give you a special item instead of a plan these give you more game features like the almanac a book where you can find the deep lore of the game or the shop where you can buy the best plants in the game and instead of having to play through the usual routine you get to play a fun little mini game whether it's walnut bowling whack a zombie big trouble little zombies vase

breaker and uh that one with the chompers each of the mini games used in adventure mode are unique and end up being some of the most memorable levels in the whole game of course besides for the most part the final battle sequences are nothing to write home about every 10th level the game replaces the seeds you select with a conveyor belt of random plants that you get throughout the course of the world these are fine but it's not too much of a change from the regular formula but then there's worlds four and five world fives

is the final boss obviously but world four has no reason to have such a cool finale for the entire world you have to deal with having less sight because of the fog but then for the finale the fog is lifted but the problem still remains due to the storm that's taking place so you need to either take shots in the dark and hope you place the plant correctly or wait till the next lightning strike to take place and how can we forget the greatest character in all of media crazy dave dave is your whacky neighbor

who hops in every once in a while to give you some exposition or to tell you how to do things and while some may find him annoying i personally think he's stupid enough to be funny but not stupid enough to be well you know stupid and besides he's the owner of the shop that may or may not be the trunk of his car each and every world in place versus zombies has a unique gimmick the day world is just your run-of-the-mill gameplay having sun fall from the sky thus allowing it to be slightly easier the

whole world is pretty much just designed to teach you the basics of the game the second world is pretty much the same thing as the first taking place in the same yard however it takes away an essential element of the world before it that being sunlight you don't realize how important getting sun from the sky is until the game takes it away from you and this leads to having a much slower startup than in the first world but that's not the only thing the second world has to offer we're also introduced to graves which spawns

zombies at the end of each level to add on to the already quite chaotic final wave the third world brings us back to the daytime i've always appreciated how world 3 negates the use of the plants from the second world yeah you know those plants that you just used to great effect well [ __ ] you it's daytime now so you gotta go back to your old friends from the first world however it also has six lanes instead of five lily pads are very important here as without them you wouldn't be able to place plants

on the water which allows zombies to basically walk inside of your house world 4 brings back the mushrooms remember those guys but as previously mentioned there's fog that hides a decent chunk of the playing field from you and you have to use certain plants to clear up the fog and of course the fifth world has you using flower pots and catapults to get around having to use your plants on the roof this also happens to be the world where the most powerful type of zombie is introduced the gargantuar the ending to the game is also

extremely rewarding after fighting your way through 49 levels of the zombie onslaught you eventually make your way to the final boss the zombot while it isn't the hardest boss to ever exist the final battle is a rock solid finale to the game mixing the same power defense formula we're used to while still introducing brand new mechanics and threats throughout the fight and the animation for defeating zombos is also a very nice touch and the reward for beating the game is excellent i didn't know i needed to see a music video for a silly song that

happens to work perfectly for the game but i know i do now and as you can see there wasn't a big team behind the game the credits are just a little blurb of text scrolling then it's gone and how can we forget all these bonus game modes and great mini games you unlock after beating the adventure mode like bejeweled and uh bejeweled but worse but really there's so many minigames that are memorable and even more replayable than the adventure mode itself the console ports also add exclusive mini games specifically in the ds version in that

game there's a mini game you could unlock called air raid and it pretty much functions as a ds version of the plane bosses from cuphead the console versions also got a versus mode which to this day continues to be an exclusive to the xbox ps3 and nintendo ds versions however you could still play the console versions on pc via emulators and the puzzle mini games and survival modes are also a really nice touch unfortunately the pc version is many years out of date and it's literally the worst version of the game it doesn't have the

multiplayer fun from the versus mode and it doesn't have the same amount of mini games and achievements as the mobile version the pc version was kind of left dead in the water after years of neglect but nonetheless it's still a fantastic game to this day plants vs zombies is a game easy enough for anyone to play and beat it yet engaging enough for someone like me to still find enjoyment playing the game even after so many years so with that i think it's easy to tell why planet vs zombies is the single highest rated tower

defense game of all time the lane mechanic unique concept and characters and it has an overflow of content to boot it's also on so many different platforms that it's difficult to have not heard of it so seeing the immaculate success of plants vs zombies and popcap as a whole on july 12 2011 ea would acquire pop cap for 650 million dollars now ea is a company pretty much known for buying studios and then running them into the ground two years before this they shut down pandemic studios which was known for the destroy all humans games

and the original star wars battlefront games i guess this just serves as a bit of foreshadowing four years later pop cap now owned by ea released the second plants vs zombies game plants vs zombies two it's about time and while it took many years after release to fully finish the game and added all the worlds and other game modes we finally have it in a completely finished state as a game plants vs zombies 2 is alright but as a sequel it's almost perfect the game takes place throughout the course of human history and each world

takes place in a different era like ancient egypt far future pirate seas the dark ages and sky city it expands on every aspect of the original game and the scope as a whole is much wider here with each world being 25 levels instead of the usual 10. wait why are there 32 levels in big wave beach however the grandeur status the game goes for also leads to a lot of flaws because there are so many levels per world it leads to these moments where at times you have to go up to five levels before you

even get access to a new plan which makes the game feel repetitive to play at points to fix this they added these special levels with clear conditions and while i like them for the most part i can't help but feel like the game overuses them as a crutch to avoid adding more unique levels the first game also has points like these but due to getting a new plant each and every level you never get bored of the formula as long as you're unlocking new things but everything else aside i think the biggest problem with this

game is that it's a mobile game and while some might say that plants vs zombies one was also a mobile game while that's technically true plants vs zombies is not a mobile game it's a pc game that happens to function excellently with a touch screen plants vs zombies 2 on the other hand was designed specifically for mobile in fact there isn't even an official port for pc or consoles to this day it's continuing to be exclusive to mobile where it suffers with all the issues that every money hungry mobile game has nowadays there are ads

after finishing every level there are microtransactions and the game sells out a ton the ui has these free rewards advertised all over it and it comes across as a bit scummy each and every one of these issues combined significantly reduces the quality of the game and makes it an overall worse experience to the player there's still a lot of neat things here but i feel like i can't really praise the game as confidently as i can with the first this game introduced a leveling feature which is single-handedly responsible for a ton of those click bait

videos with the highly photoshopped thumbnails hi bro i need your support please like this video and comment 666 i will release the next video as soon as possible thanks you everyone they reworked the zen garden why did they rework the zen garden the game adds a lot of unique plants and zombies as well but it ends up running into a bit of a problem with the later worlds with the first game only having 49 plans it was able to have every single plant fulfill a purpose that felt meaningful here are some examples sunshoom allows for

quick replacements at the beginning of a night but sunflower can upgrade to twin sunflower repeater and three peter are both peashooters but they're also way more expensive than a pea shooter with plants vs zombies two i don't feel any of that at the end of age in egypt you unlock twin sunflower and because they removed the purple plant feature you're now able to just get double the sun right away and it makes regular sunflower completely irrelevant same thing goes with most of the primal plants they're often just better versions of their normal counterparts and don't

even get me started on paid plans so for some reason to get all the plants in the game about plants and zombies you have to pay seven dollars for each individual plan and with 16 paid plants you're looking at spending over a hundred dollars and just as a final [ __ ] you from ea there's still no way to remove ads it doesn't help that after making it to the third world every time i got an ad the game would proceed to soft lock thereby making the game straight up unplayable a redeeming quality though are

the bosses while the zombot was a fantastic fight the other robots in pvz2 show up in every world and are all different in a handful of ways all of which using the gimmicks from the worlds that they're a part of i actually like these guys they're good in my opinion plants vs zombies 2 is where the cracks begin to show in the foundation the game itself is really solid and you can tell that there was a ton of work and effort put into the game but i'm sure someone at ea was pressuring for all this

mobile game scumminess to be added i don't believe the game designers intentionally chose to butcher their own game or at least i hope they didn't after this point the series gets a bit weird instead of going for the usual tower defense style they chose for the next plants vs zombies game to be in the form of a third-person shooter and while it sounds like it's a bad idea to change the entire genre of a game in an already existing franchise they actually saw a great success with this change in format that game is planters and

zombies garden warfare people actually really liked this game now i can't play it for myself because it's not on steam but from memory i remember having a good time playing this game there are two main game options garden ops and multiplayer in garden ops you have to fight through 10 waves of zombies with various types of zombies and also boss fights between rounds it incorporates elements from the original tower defense games like planting [Music] planting and like the first pvz game there's a lot of content in garden warfare due to the various game modes like

team vanquish gnome bomb welcome mat and taco bandits which are all parodies of your typical fps game modes then in february 2016 they made a second one plants vs zombies garden warfare 2 and this one was somehow even more well received than the first game popcap took a similar approach nintendo did with mario galaxy too they took what made the first one so good and made more of it more characters more game modes more cosmetics and more micro transactions mystery ea's got to make that money somehow am i right but it still ends up being

a really good game again it pretty much expands on everything and they both end up being solid additions to the series then plants vs zombies heroes kinda just existed one day and in my opinion it's the black sheep of the pvz franchise i think this might just be where popcap and ea finally dropped the ball as i rarely ever see anyone talking about this game ever the game was released in october of 2016. once again popcap and ea have decided to reinvent the series and at that point it had been three years since the launch

of pvz2 so people have been waiting quite a while for a new power defense game and when people saw that this was not a tower defense game and instead a card game they just forgot about it personally i don't mind this game it's a neat change of pace compared to the rest of the series it kinda did the opposite of what pvz2 did instead of expanding the scope of the game pvz heroes prides itself in being a less stressful and more laid-back experience basically you play missions collect cards and build your deck there are plenty

of heroes to choose from all of which have a different deck tied to them and you can even play as the zombies the gameplay itself uses a unique turn-based system the zombies take priority and go first just like how the gameplay loop in the base plants vs zombies games involves building a defense from the zombies which show up to get you then the plants have their turn where you can put up your defense and then you get to watch the whole thing play out different plants and zombies have different abilities and each new round gives

one more sun than the last the same thing goes off for the zombies except they get brains instead of sun it's a pretty fun and addicting game honestly but the whole thing feels a bit cheap presentation wise you can tell that they were less ambitious with this game rather than the others in the series and i could say the same thing about the budget some can make the criticism that it's just a hearthstone ripoff with a pvz skin and others are dana raid well terror i don't know what you're talking about plants vs zombies heroes

isn't that bad for being a pvz game built from the ground up for mobile they really utilize the hardware well to win experience that puts a new fun twist on the traditional plants vs zombies formula wow thank you danery from the website youtube.com very cool so plants vs zombies heroes is a fine enough game but the issues all come down to it not being what the people want and at this point the audience is kind of split between 2d tower defense games and 3d third person shooters so then pop cap and ea then go silent

for the next three years and let their already released games continue to provide revenue through ads and microtransactions then in summer of 2019 they released battle for naberville so people were hyped it's been well over three years since the second garden warfare so it was about time for another third person shooter the way to separate this one from the other two is that this one is bad so as it turns out releasing a game with no content isn't very good the plans vs zombie series was well known driving a ton of content in each and

every game yet there was nothing here unlike the garden warfare games this one decided to focus a lot more on pve stuff however from what i've heard the cosmetics being rewarded aren't a good enough incentive to keep playing the game and the missions in the game are quite boring so yeah people really didn't like this one in february of 2020 they released the soft launch for plans for zombies 3. people were pretty excited as at that point it's been about 7 years since the last tower defense game then they saw the game and um there

were a few issues sunflowers were completely reworked the game's now in portrait mode and the new art style looks a tad bit ugly two of these issues were caused by the game once again going after the mobile market the graphical transition from the pvz2 cartoony designs to 3d models could have definitely been a smoother transition and due to the community backlash popcap was about to be burned at the stake but thankfully pogba actually decided to take the game down and rework it over a year later in september 2021 the game was once again put out

into the world this time it played a lot more like the first two games the aspect ratio was fixed the visuals now look a lot nicer and serve as a good progression of the plants vs zombies art style the way sun works is practically the same as the last few games but instead of getting 25 sun per sun or 50 sun per sun this game has you collecting sun one to one and while it certainly looks a bit weird to see i actually don't mind it although i will say from the gameplay we've seen so

far it seems more like a retread of the original material than anything else it's almost like now they're scared of change after the backlash they got from changing too much of it the first time i'm hoping that the game gets a decent amount of new features later on as the last thing you want for a sequel to do is to go backwards on the scale and mechanics it's not terrible anymore although i will say there's still a lot to work on by now the plants vs zombies name has definitely lost a large chunk of its

former glory is it still redeemable i believe so but until we start to see some actual good-looking high-effort games with actual content again i won't hold my breath so what killed plants vs zombies while it's impossible to point to one specific thing i think it was the transition from the goal being to make a high quality game to instead making a game to get as much money as possible and ea definitely had a hand in that but i also think it was how far the series branched out each of these games has a specific fan

base but overlap between the fan bases isn't guaranteed i think that they roamed too far from where they began and that's how we ended up here plants vs zombies will always be one of my favorite game franchises of all time but seriously pop cap just give us what we all want make plants vs zombies remastered