User blog:Cavia porcellus/Frostbite Caves review

Like I did with my User blog:Cavia porcellus/Big Wave Beach Review|Big Wave Beach review]] a while back, I patiently waited for the entire FC to soft release so that I can review it without encountering the scenario of loving one part, but being disappointed by the next. Now it's the time for the reviewing.

Note that I will grade things a little differently now than what I did with Big Wave Beach.

New Plants
Hot Potato - I used to think this plant was pointless. Since Dark Ages, good observers would have noticed that every new world's first plant is what I call the environmental plant, i.e. a plant that has something to do with the lawn modifiers. This was no different, except that first I thought that Hot Potato would be totally unneeded, compared to Sun-shroom and Lily Pad. Oh, how wrong I was, and I didn't need Part 2 to make me change my mind (but only made me like it even more).

I really like its animation and the fact that it's immune (unlike Grave Buster). Sure, it's annoying that it's not very different to the previously mentioned plant, but I don't mind it that much. You'll be using it a lot more anyway.

In short, this plant is useful for: unfreezing pre-given frozen plants, quickly unfreezing plants frozen by Hunter, dealing with Troglobites, unfreezing one plant to plant a "hot plant" which will unfreeze the others (I hope you got this), starting levels in Icebound Battleground (vital, basically), and other scenarios.

Grade: 4.5/5

Pepper-pult - Can I just say how surprised I was to see an All Stars plant in our version? The fact that it's slightly different in design and a flame effect plopped on? The fact that I was right when I translated it as (Bell) Pepper-pult in your face, Itsleo20! . Well, I hope to see some more AS plants, because they have some cool-looking ones.

Anyway, while this was definitely the most popular and loved plant of Part 1 and probably the entire Frostbite Caves, it's also the least useful in Part 1. I originally thought it'd be a sl is a joke (probably the worst recharge for a plant in the game), and the splash damage is pretty poor with its 0.5 normal damage shots.

It's useful, however, for warming up plants (especially in Part 2), and I use it over Fire Peashooter for the splash damage (albeit weak). It's hard to keep planting these, but I get the feeling PopCap didn't want us spamming these, except to use them as warmers more (like Sweet Potato, maybe?).

The Plant Food effect lobs only 4 big projectiles, unlike all other -pults with damage outputs, therefore it's pretty random with many zombies on the lawn.

Grade: 3.5/5

Chard Guard - It's getting hard to grade the beginning plants, they're all good (even Pepper-pult). This is a really good plant. Admittedly, I thought I'd hate it when I saw the Dev Diary, though to be fair, it wasn't clearly demonstrated whether it had an Area of Effect or not. Thank God it (he?) does.

It's hard to list everything this plant is good at. It's useful in any world, it can push back GARGANTUARS, so it's not a bad idea as an Endless Zone option, and it can even counter Mecha-Footballers in a way! Surprisingly, it's really useful in Frostbite Caves. I'm guessing it's because of the sliders and the fact that with less planting space and less damage output, you're going to be stalling those zombies.

I like it's design too. I originally thought it would look like that old concept with the green veggie, but I'm glad it looks like this. Definitely feels different from other plants with the design and animation, and I'm glad that PopCap is starting to introduce some "lesser-known" plants in the game. Finally, I like that it yells every time.

The three uses is definitely a good, non-OP number. I don't mind the Sluggish recharge, but I do mind the Almanac which can't get its things straight.

The Plant Food effect isn't anything amazing, but you can combine it with Blover if you hate the Spring Bean combo. You probably won't be using the effect, since Chard Guard gets the job done anyway.

Grade: 5/5

Hurrikale

Stunion

X-Shot (Rotobaga :P)

Fire Peashooter

TO BE CONTINUED