Popcap is probably similar to Hulu, trying to rot our brains and slurp up to the mush, but really I don't mind because as my brain turns to mush I can live with peace of mind that zombies won't be getting to mushy gray mattery goodness.   Plants vs Zombies is probably the best "casual" game I have played, other than CoD4 and Tf2 I find my self constantly returning to this lovely cute game.  Whether its to water my Zen Garden or play a round or two of this nicely stylized game.  When I say casual I refer to a game that is "smaller" and overall more of a game that can be taken in small chunks.  This game caught my attention when steam had bundled it with Small Arms which was alright on xbl but suprisingly the PC version lacks support for my wireless 360 controller and playing the game was no where as entertaining.  Anyway once I was able to actually install this bad boy I found out that it was rather deep in the amount of modes it offered for a seemingly simple time waster.

So with my regular lurking at Kotakudotcom I've been reading a lot of comments about Left 4 Dead 2, and the "communities" reaction to it.  You have these two groups who have a fundamental difference opinion of how game development should be.  Some favor the PC style and others have been reared as console game model.  Now I game predominantly on the PC but I do own consoles.  As a some what tech savy person I enjoy the things that PC games do well, like the mouse keyboard interface, and I'm not even a fps purist, because back in the day I played Doom, Hexen and their bretheren with keyboard only.  Now the L4D2 debacle boils down for me at least in the perspective of PC game development comes off as an expansion and not a stand alone game.  Why? because its the same game as its predecessor.  The new added things are just things that are cosmetic in nature, new models, but the core gameplay other than the new infected are truly new to this game.  With the use of the SAME engine, which is an already very dated engine I just find that the game doesn't garner the status of sequel.  Of course console gamers don't seem to understand that using the same damn engine cuts down on development time.  I for one will not be purchasing L4D2 because, 1 I'm not a crazed fan of zombie shooters, 2 the price point is just too high (the last game I payed actually original price was Plants Vs. Zombie) 3 the game is in itself very similar to the second game.  With the long life that the source engine has had, I think ValvE as a developer is to make a new engine, I also think this goes for Epic who are still using the damn Unreal 3 engine.  Oh well, I'm not a frugal gamer at all, I played WoW and even multiboxed that damn game so money isn't an issue, its just the precieved value that seems to be bugging me about the game.