Gameloft Joins The Social Networking Phenomenon
Green Farm™ (Free) by Gameloft is the newest release from the game developer giant that brought us War in the Pacific, Sacred Odyssey, and Order & Chaos Online. Green Farm is Gameloft’s attempt at a pure social networking game. Like the excellent knock-offs the company has produced in the past, Green Farm puts its predecessors to shame with great graphics, simple game play, and lots of buying options.
Be forewarned, you have to be signed into Facebook to play this game. There is no option not to. If you do not like to play games through social networking sites, don’t even waste your time downloading it, this game is not for you.
For those that are already addicted to Farmville, this game may just be your newest obsession. It is chock full of farming, buying and selling, gifting to Facebook friends, and sharing your accomplishments online.
When you begin your game, you are able to choose your farmer’s gender, what he or she looks like, including such options as cat eyes and nose, and brightly colored hair. Once your avatar is complete, you can dress (or undress) it as you see fit. The first outfit is very limited, but you can buy better ones, and even earn them as rewards as your character levels up. You are given a basic tutorial as you begin plowing and harvesting your crops. With enough coins or bucks, you can turn a small piece of land into a high-yielding farm that all of your Facebook friends will be envious of.
While the number of items available to buy is vast, everything is very expensive. Even items that require coins instead of bucks are outrageously priced, forcing you to either toil in the fields until you get bored, or pay real cash to add coins and bucks to your coffers. Gameloft really knew what they were doing when they created this game. Charging exorbitant amounts of in-game money that you can only get by paying real-life cash for, in a game that you download for free, is a great strategy. Because it is so addictive, it will be easy for many to get duped into spending their lunch money and their quality time on this game.
There are a few kinks in Green Farm that need to be worked out. The placement of plots of land seems awkward and you can’t just move them once they are down. You have to delete a plot (wasting coins) and buy new ones, hoping you place them correctly. Much of the game appears to be incorrectly calibrated. At least on my iPad 2 that is the case. This isn’t too big of an issue, I’ll get used to it. Also, you can’t place a plot of land where an animal is standing. You have to move it out of the way first. This process seems excessive since the animals are not stationary. They wander the fields all of the time.
Overall, Green Farm will be a huge success. Gameloft makes excellent games and they are great at taking ideas that already exist and making them better. The game is free, so why not give it a try? The worst that could happen is you spend $100 in real money to get that crop duster you wanted. If that happens, you may want to put down your iDevice and go outside for a few hours.
