Gaming Bringing People Together

While this is something that has died out in recent years I still see it flying around the Internet in certain places.  What I'm of course referring to is that horrible stereotype of an overweight, neckbearded layabout with no friends and no future sitting around and playing video games all day.  

I think it's safe to say that most people reading this blog know that isn't the case and I also think that most people are aware it has never been the case.  I think part of the reason that the stereotype has almost died off over the years is because of gaming systems utilizing online play or, with companies like Nintendo, emphasizing the social experience.  

However even before the tech and the rise in popularity of the medium gaming was NEVER like the aforementioned stereotype.  I think almost everyone who has been gaming for a long time has some kind of memory that involves huddling around a split screen for hours and hours with friends or staying up stupid late to play a new release they were excited about.  

In my teenage years I was extremely anti social for a number of reasons but gaming didn't keep me locked in the house and away from people, it did the exact opposite.  While I hated almost everyone with a pulse at my school it was the small group of gamers that I ended up hanging around with and to top it all off I'm still in contact with them today, which cannot be said for people I met through other means.  

Despite all this though, the image of the basement dwelling nerd persists even today.  Usually these comments are made by idiots who don't game or gaming journalists who are being disagreed with on sites like Twitter.

Gaming is probably one of the MOST social past times you can engage in, not the least and it's always been that way.  So if you do see anyone on social media making comments like that, please know that you would have good reason to laugh at them and shun them.

Plants Vs Zombies Adventures

Usually I stay well the fuck away from facebook games.  These things don't really seem like games, just gem matching time wasters for people to whittle away hours on and then brag about their not really high scores.

But then Plants Vs Zombies Adventures came along and piqued my interest.  The original Plants Vs Zombies was something I picked up on Steam during a sale a long long time ago and I was pleasantly surprised with how fun that ended up being.  So when I heard there was a PvZ game on Facebook I felt compelled to give it a try.

Well if you were a fan of the Original this game is a lot more similar to classic tower defence games.  You have a path that the zombies walk down and you place your plants along those paths to take them out.  If they reach your RV/House then you lose and if you kill them all you win.  The good thing is the games adventure mode seems to have a metric fuckton of levels despite only being in Beta and I can only assume more stuff will be added at a later date.

The other key feature of this game is the whole home garden thing. 

You see, unlike the original PVZ you can't just unlock the plant and then use it.  You must first grow and stockpile an army of plants to use in the levels on this home screen.  Planting plants isn't free though, so you hae to spend coins that you earn from the houses that you build, but building houses costs zombucks which you can earn from fighting zombies.  Luckily the game starts you off with a nice amount of coins and zombucks so you won't find yourself struggling for resources.  There are also diamonds which is this games micro transaction but it's used mainly for speeding things up and you don't need to pay to actually do well at the levels.

All things considered it's actually a pretty fun game.  You can add your friends as neighbours and help them out or send a horde of zombies to their gardens to mess them up so they did a good job of making the social element fun rather than crap and obnoxious although I've not really used it much.

So if you're like me and you have reservations with facebook games, then throw them aside and give this a go, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.