Mixing things up a little bit with a suggestion from my editor Mistress Sarah-Kun, here is the first installment of “To Be a Better Gamer” brought to you by yours truly, Mr. Gamer.
For those who are not aware, Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time, created by Popcap games, is the wonderful sequel to Plants Vs. Zombies, a game originally on the PC. After a huge success, the original game was then ported over to the Nintendo DS and to mobile devices from there.
The success brought more people to the PvZ fandom which brought about the next game’s clever title, “Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time” (I see what you did there…) The game used most of the same plants and recent updates brought back the dearly missed Zen Garden (Bucking finally). With the addition of the Zen Garden, the complete set of plants at your disposal, and my professional expertise, you’ll have green thumbs in these zombie infested worlds. Zomboss won’t know what hit him.
First things first, you have all these plants and they do so many things. That’s cool but now you have to use them efficiently. Randomly choosing plants will result in many brainy noms for the zombies and I’m sure you’ll mind that. (The puns aren’t going anywhere…)
Getting close to the end game of PvZ2, you’ll notice that the game isn’t very nice. It knows when you are sleeping, it doesn’t care if you are awake, it knows when you are doing too good, so listen up for goodness sake. These are your essential plants for about every level when you can. (Please note that this list only contains plants that you get throughout the regular play-through. I do not buy plants, because fuck micro-transactions.)
- Sunflower (Duh, you need sun)
- Twin Sunflower – to replace the sunflower for DOUBLE SUN POWER!!!
- Some type of instant kill plant (ordered by preference)
- Chili Bean
- Cherry Bomb
- Potato bomb
- Some plant to slow/stop the zombie horde
- Iceberg Lettuce
- Kernel-pult
- Winter Melon
- Spikeweed or Spikerocks
Notice that on this list, I did not include Peashooters or Wallnuts. When I play, I am all about power and offense. I don’t need Wallnuts because that’s a plant slot that I could use for killing. Also, Peashooters just down a lane while the Kernel-pult lobs the damage directly to the zombie.
Now you have some plant background, but you can’t go calling yourself a botanist just yet. You need to know how to use the plants properly. Now we come to my favorite part; plant combos. Theses combos do not make the plants stronger but they do kill the zombies quicker, using the plants powers in tandem with each other.
“Hot Butter”
- Snapdragon
- Kernel-Pult
- Wall-nut or Tall-Nut
This combo works very well killing things quickly. There is a bit of a risk because you don’t have the guaranteed slow like with the Wintermelon and the Kernel-Pult only has a 33% percent chance to stun. But with two columns of Kernel-Pults and Snapdragons along with 1 column of nuts, anything coming down your lane is going to be exploding like popcorn. (Extra Butter!)
“Cold Butter”
- Winter Melon
- Kernel Pult
This combo is the safest of the three because you have the ability to slow and stun huge groups of zombies at once. This is simply done with 2 or 3 columns of Kernel Pults (depending on if you want overkill or not) and 1 column of Winter Melons. The splash slow damage of the melons and the stunning power of the butter ensures your victory in most situations.
“Cold Laser Burn”
- Winter Melon
- Laser-Beam
This combo is one of my newer ones and it gives you piercing damage from the Laser-Bean with the slowing power of the melon. Because of the fire rate of the bean, you may want 2 or 3 columns of this plant with 1 column of melon.
Here are just a few more things to help you plant your seed of victory.
- If you can, plant a Bonk-choy in the back lane versus using a Split-Pea. You should already have plants firing forward. The Bonk-choy hits faster and lasts longer than the Split-Pea.
- The most important plant for the Pirate Seas level is the Blower from the Future world. Three zombies unique to that world are all affected by the blower. Even minions getting shot out of the cannon and popping out of the barrel (with some precision planting) will be killed by it. For a measly 50 sun, its an excellent addition to your arsenal.
- If the chickens are giving more trouble than they need to, use some Spikeweed or Spikerock. Not only do they kill the 1 HP chickens faster than anything else, but they serve another purpose by damaging all zombies that walk over them, and destroying the piano playing zombies.
- Spikerocks will give you an extra few seconds when dealing with Gargantuars, as they take three hits to kill.
- You get 9 lanes total. 1-2 will always be used for sun, 1 will usually be used for defense. I recommend using all but 3 lanes for those and taking three lanes for the walking damage plants.
I hope you enjoyed my little guide to help you Be A Better Gamer in PvZ2. Got anything you want to add or disagree with anything, leave me a comment!
Don’t forget to follow me here, on Twitter, and Tumblr!