If you have yet to give it a shot and don’t care to invest the cost to just try it out, stop by Impulse’s website and check out the newly released demo!  While it’s true (in my opinion) that the demo should have been made available even before launch, it’s nice to see that they’ve finally got one out and are trying to get some new blood into the game.

If you’re not familiar with the game, check out my DemiGod review posted a few months earlier.

It’s been about two weeks now since we’ve installed and been playing Popcap’s newest hit – Plants vs Zombies! and over those weeks, many hours have been spent vigilantly growing a monster garden to defend my house (and brain) from a never ending zombie onslaught.  As with their previous hits, most recently, Peggle, Popcap has pulled through again delivering a great game that can be played in short bursts and is full of humor, clever graphics and classic Popcap-style music.

Plants vs Zombies is primarily set in your home’s back yard where you grow a garden of angry plants which assist you in fighting off the zombies using a variety of weapons including peas, butter, cabbage, watermelons, walnuts, fire, mushrooms and pumpkin shells.. to name a few.  The main adventure mode of the game encompasses 50 levels in 5 zones: Backyard, Backyard with water, Backyard night time, Backyard night time with water and your roof where the zombies make their final assault.

PvZ is a unique take on a growing genre of short-duration gaming known as a Tower Defense.  Tower Defenses (or Mauls) started as a Warcraft III custom game (similar to DotAs – see our review of DemiGod) where players build autonomous Towers, which can be anything from actual arrow-shooting towers to a recreation of a cartoon character that shoots snowballs, that shoot mindlessly at creatures that walk through them on a static path.  PvZ changes the classic TD setting by giving the player 5 rows to fill with plants and having zombies randomly spawn in any of the lanes.  There are only a few select plants that can cover multiple lanes; so building the plants in the proper order from the beginning is important in ensuring your brain’s safety.

Overall, the adventure mode took probably 4 to 5 hours to complete and was actually a little too easy to complete in my opinion.  There were only a handful of levels that I restarted due to bad placement initially and there were no levels that I outright lost where a zombie ate my brain.  I can understand the intent of designing a game mean to be played in small increments to be easier; players would be less motivated to replay a level if they only had a few minutes to play and difficult levels that go on for 5+ minutes would be undesirable.  However, for the mode hard-core gamers among us, at least giving an option to play the adventure mode on a Hard difficulty (right now, there is no difficulty selection) for a bit more of a challenge.

Along with protecting your home, one of the primary aspects of the game is collecting money (small coins that pop up on the screen from time to time) which is used to buy a wide variety of products from your neighbor, Crazy Dave, to enhance different aspects of game play.  One of the first things you can purchase are enhancements to the plants in your garden.  There are over 40 plants you can acquire, plus additional upgrades, and at the start of each level you can only 6 (or more if you buy the proper upgrade), so there is never a lack of thought that can go into the inital planning for your garden.   For a full list of plants, check out: http://jayisgames.com/walkthroughs/plants-vs-zombies Besides new plants to grow, there are various other enhancements you can buy with the coins you collect to buy items usable long beyond the adventure.

Where the game really begins to shine is once the adventure mode has been completed.  There are a slew of mini-type-games that will keep you occupied long after the adventure has ended and a great reward system to entice you to keep playing.  Once you’ve completed the adventure, you start to gain access to Puzzles, Survival Mode, Minigames and a Zen Garden (tended by a lethargic snail).  Completing these games earns money, special Zen Garden plants and trophies and will take considerably more time to complete than the initial adventure while providing a lot of entertainment and classic Popcap game references.

Overall, Plants vs Zombies is another instant classic from Popcap that I would recommend to anyone whether a fan of classic Tower Defense games or not.  They do a great job of walking you through the initial game play without providing any type of manual or instructions, and, once you have got a basic concept of the game, allow you to create massive armies of zombie battling greenery!

EPIC!

Buy Plants vs Zombies (or get the free tiral) at: http://www.popcap.com/games/pvz/

I’m calling this a quick review because I haven’t put very much time into the game, but I feel it warrants some discussion and there isn’t a WHOLE lot to it. In fact, there might not be enough to it.. I’ll get into that later.

Demigod is the new PC game released by Gas Powered Games (demigodthegame.com)which has a playstyle that anyone who played custom games in Warcraft 3 should be familiar with. Demigod is basically a full game based around the classic Defense of the Ancients. Two teams of up to five players push through lanes and attempt to take over the other teams base by capturing strategic points including defensive towers, spawn points and walls while playing as one of eight Demigods (heroes) and being assisted by an autonomous army of smaller scale units.

I had the game installed last night and immediately jumped in to a game with computer teammates / opponents. A common complaint or point of concern among the community trying Demigod is the lack of instruction. The game comes with no manual in the box and is completely void of any in-game tutorials, they are either making the assumption that everyone who picks this up is familiar with how to play a DotA style game or that everyone despises manuals and would rather just figure it out.

Luckily, I fall into the first group, having spent many hours over the years playing the various types of DotAs that have made their way across b.net (<3 rumble), but, even still, I was a bit disoriented when stepping into Demigod.

Before I get into the game play, I would like to mention what I feel to be a major short coming for a $50 game when compared to the free versions that have been out for years and that is character selection. Both sides (light and dark) have access to the same group of Demigods, but there are only 8 total (not sure if you can have multiples of the same demigod on the same team). While I can understand that they might be trying to keep the game simple, only having eight choices for playable characters seems really lacking. On the flip side, there are also eight maps you can play on, but I would prefer more Demigod choices even if they were all on the same map.

I was caught off guard by the controls (and the inability to change some which were particularly bothersome) because I made the false assumption that a DotA game should play like a WC3 game; this was something I was fighting with the whole time I was playing. Camera navigation is done with WASD for pan and Q and E for rotate; holding down the space bar puts the camera into free mode which makes it follow your mouse. And, of course, the scroll wheel works as zoom which (nicely) allows you to zoom far enough out to see the entire map. The inability to freely use the mouse to manipulate the camera as in WC3 really bothered me, but, with time, I can see this not being an issue as I adapt to the strange configuration.

The gameplay itself is what you’d expect – simple, fun and exciting.

As your Demigod levels, he is able to learn and improve special abilities to increase his abilities on the field – see the screenshot below.  There are 4 active abilities for each Demigod and a varying number of passive abilities along with a generic stat upgrade, this was a nice boost over the original DotA’s 3 abilities (and one special) and allows for at least some degree of character customization.  There are also item shops that you can use to buy select pieces of gear (with some pretty interesting bonuses) and usable items and potions.

The games seem to last at least 20-30 minutes on average but can easily be dragged out to over an hour with 2 skilled teams who keep all their lanes strong.  Along with buying gear and potions, you can put money you earn toward upgrading both your buildings and units attack/defense, even going so far as causing new types of units to be produced.  It seems that this is in place to still give a reason for individuals to creep for gold (though I didn’t come across and creep spawns in the short time I played) instead of focusing on laning.

As it stands, I think this is a great game and have very high hopes for it.  Had a ton of fun in the short time I was playing it last night, and once I become a bit more comfortable and have put a few solid hours into it I’ll post a more in-depth review.  For now, anyone who was ever a big fan of DotA on WC3 should be picking this up and checking it out.

Any gamer knows that the biggest fear in an MMO is having your account hacked and all of your gear, gold and potentially characters stolen or removed.  On a daily basis we hear stories from our fellow gamers about having their accounts hacked and gear sharded and sold off.  Blizzard has made a solid effort with their authenticators that definitely do add a great second factor of authentication, but there are other (free) games that are seemingly ahead of the game with their methods of authentication, and they don’t require you to carry around a big blue key chain (or pay an additional $7).

The threat of having your account hacked is spread across all MMORPGs and attacks can range from simple brute force to complicated social engineering and clickjacking setups.  In the past, there have not been many attempts by the game developers to implement methods of preventing account theft, and it’s only been in the recent generation of MMOs that GMs have become more willing to restore “stolen” gear.  I would attribute this to the improvement in their ability to log the trafficking of goods and golds from character to character and realm to realm making it harder to fake your account being hacked in hopes to get some free lewt.

The most well known example of a game developer providing additional account security is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Authenticator (pictured above), and it does provide a solid, two-factor, method of authentication that will effectively thwart any attempt at access to your account without the device.  However, there has been a strong effort among developers of free MMOs to provide enhanced security without any additional cost.  Below, we will profile three games, WoW and two free MMOs, and their particular methods of account security.

World Of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Security Method: Additional Hardware

Blizzard has a lot of weight on their shoulders when it comes to ensuring account security if for no other reason than the fact that they have a huge subscriber base and every time someone’s account is hacked, they need to devote resources to researching the attack and restoring anything lost. It is, therefore, Blizzard’s best interest to promote account security and keep gold and epics on the players who earned them.  The solution they have provided is an additional piece of hardware, a key fob which produces a pseudorandom yet sequential number when a button is pressed that is entered in addition to your password.

This security model is not particularly new, individuals in the security field may be familiar with RSA SecurID tokens, CryptoCards or YubiKeys which provide either an on-demand or cycling one-time-password (OTP) that can be used for additional authentication when entered either separately or appended to the end of your normal password.  PayPal has also recently begun producing their “football” which is the same type of device, but has some security issues of it’s own that we don’t need to get into here.

The benefit of a  separate hardware device that produces a OTP is that is truly provides you with two-factor authentication.  That is to say, logging in required both someting you KNOW (your password) and something you HAVE (the authenticator) and one will not work without the other.  Multi-factor authentication is extremely strong in this situation because it bypasses any type of keystroke monitoring, be it some keylogging software or hardware on the computer you are using or someone staring over your shoulder.  It’s no problem if they are able to log your password and write down your authenticator code.  The next time someone attempts to login to your account, WoW will simply request the next token code in the cycle and deny anyone without it.

The downside to Blizzard’s authenticator is twofold – the cost and the fact that it is something else you need to carry around.  The Blizzard Store (when it’s available) lists the authenticator for about $7, which seems a reasonable price to ensure the security and longevity of your virtual life, and it is unarguably the most secure method of what we will be discussing today, but the point still stands that there is an additional cost associated with it.  Also, if you happen to lose the token or if it breaks – which has been known to happen, you are pretty much without the ability to login at all, which could theoretically cause more downtime than actually getting hacked, with how efficient Blizzard generally is when restoring accounts.

Requiem (Gravity Interactive)

Security Method: Mouse-entered PIN

Here we have the character login screen for Gravity Interactive’s free MMORPG, Requiem.  Requiem chose to go a different route than Blizzard and added additional security to the logon process by requiring a separate PIN that needs to be entered when logging into a character.  As a free MMO, they would be hard pressed to convince customers to invest any amount of money in the game, particularly for account security.

Requiem’s PINs are character specific.  Each time you make a new character on the account, you are required to create a 4-digit PIN which then has to be entered whenever you attempt to login or delete the character.  An interesting side effect of this feature is that you could have multiple people playing on the same account without having to worry about one interfering with another’s character (not that you couldn’t just make a new account for a second player as the game is free).

What makes this PIN feature truly secure is the fact that it only accepts input from a mouse click, which eliminates key logging, and each time you click on a number they all shuffle.  This would prevent a potential hacker from mapping your mouse movements and clicks – each time you enter your 4-digit PIN, you are clicking different areas of the screen.  Additionally, with the software based logon, you don’t have to worry about losing anything and not being able to connect.  Regardless of where you need to access the game, your PIN will always be available (depending on your state of mind, of course) to authenticate you.

The weakness that is inherent to any static logon information is that someone could watch/video/otherwise observe you entering your password and PIN (though, they are both displayed as *’s on screen so they would have to observe your keystrokes and mouse clicks – a privacy screen would prevent this) and then be able to log into your account and characters.  However, even having one character’s PINs found out does not totally compromise the account; each character should have a unique PIN.

Runes of Magic (Runewaker Entertainment)

(RoM actually has decent graphics, this SS was taken on a laptop at lowest settings)

Security Method: On-Screen Keyboard

The final case we will be looking at is Runes of Magic.  While they provide what I would consider the least revolutionary of the three, their effort is not to be scoffed at as it still provides key-logger-proof password entry.   When logging into your account initially and you tab down into the password entry field, an onscreen keyboard appears and you are encouraged to use a mix of the keyboard and mouse clicks to enter your password.  Using only the mouse input as opposed to a combination of both if the better route, especially if your password is something that could be easy to figure out with a few blanked out characters “p__swo_d” wouldn’t be THAT hard for a potential hacker to decipher.

As with the numbers on Requiem’s keypad, RoM’s keyboard is not in a static location on the screen, again in efforts to prevent the mapping of mouse movements and clicks to spoof a login.  Each time you go into the password field, the keyboard will appear in a different location on the screen.  Additionally, RoM required you to create a second password whenever you create characters on a new server.  However, you will only ever be prompted for this password again when trying to delete a character (which, interestingly, has a 24-hour “undo” option which will immediately restore your character).

Summary

While it would be hard to argue against Blizzard’s authenticator being the most secure of the bunch, the fact that it requires an additional investment seems unnecessary.  While I’m not opposed to having to pay for the hardware, which is really about all they’re charging, they should not alienate those who don’t want to or for whatever reason can’t get an authenticator by leaving them susceptible to key logging or social engineering attacks.  Implementing a simple, free option similar to Requiems or even just the on screen keyboard would be much appreciated and would go even further to ensure the safety of everyone’s accounts.

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