Game: Plants vs. Zombies™ 3
Platform: Mobile
Genre: Deck-builder, JRPG, Roguelike
Overview
Plants vs. Zombies 3 is exactly what we get when an organization, or in this case a developer, loses touch with their earlier days of generating addicting and quick enjoyable games on sites such as Facebook to a specific generation.
It's as if they decided to load up on everything except actual enjoyable gameplay. Everything feels like it's been created to make you want to spend money if you ever want to complete a specific stage, because unlike before, these stages are more or less forcing you to play very niche and specific builds when you might just want to put down a Pea Shooter, but the game says no. You're getting the same units and finishing this very somewhat linear puzzle that probably needs a power or two.
Graphics & Presentation
It doesn't look well in my opinion. I enjoy the Pea Shooters concept and several of the tower designs because they look playful and cute, but the rest of the game just looks terrible and is more of a distraction that actually inviting to the player who isn't young or very old, because nothing here does anything but take away from the experience.
They took a more comic book and neighborhood look than the originals, which were just you and your lawn with the fun and difficult tower defense and nothing else.
Gameplay
I'm not saying the game is absolutely bad. If there was more variety, such as an endless version or arcade mode, rather than just boring stages, the gameplay wouldn't feel like a drain on your sanity because I believe for myself I just want to play with individual units and have fun rather than completing levels that are determined by how you use what you're given, which feels dreadful like I'm playing in 2006.
The issue with the gameplay is the powerups, which are the only type of in-game reward you will ever encounter. There is nothing else but power, which soon becomes scarce, and thus the pay to win feature is implemented, because you can buy as much as you want and simply steamroll over the content.
Conclusion
Jaded developers will continue to create Jaded games that do nothing more than try to exploit users stuck in the past and in nostalgia in order to make as much money as possible from them, because as much as you may be sane and understand what is going on, people do have serious spending issues with games like this.