Happy Monday, folks! Welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread!
As part of my monthly writing project, this weekend I started—and, actually, finished—Plants vs. Zombies. I’ll save a more detailed writeup for the comments themselves, so suffice it to say that I found it a delightful soupçon of a game. Its mechanics and style are wonderful; its gameplay loop is addicting. I’m not unhappy that it was short, though (though there are bonus modes I’ll be exploring this week), just because it never came close to wearing out its welcome.
That’s not what I wanna talk about this time, though. This game is probably not my first time with the tower defense genre, if just because I’ve probably seen some cheap browser game of mini-game in a Nintendo thing that featured you stopping armies from reaching your side, but this is the first time I’ve consciously played a full tower defense game. It’s a fun genre! My staggered Pikmin and Xenoblade replays (and my slow time with Death Stranding) are pretty good examples of how much I can enjoy friction, and the slow rhythm of building offenses and defenses has turned out rather engaging. I enjoyed how very similar, standardized starts became steadily more frantic and frenetic.
So this is another simple prompt: what, if any, experiences have you had with tower defense games? Can you recommend a few options for a prospective thread poster? This is one of those fun new fields for me, like when Resident Evil 4 introduced me to horror or when Ace Attorney got to be my first visual novel. Let’s just say that I’m intrigued.
Also, make sure to remember: Lovely Lily Bones has published her monthly Game News Roundup! Make sure to check it out—I for one never miss it.