Windows Phone Xbox Live Review: Farm Frenzy 2

Farm Frenzy 2

Despite the importance of farming in sustaining human life, nosotros don't run into many videogames congenital around the subject. Consoles have the long-running Harvest Moon serial, merely outside of a puzzle game spin-off, those games haven't fabricated their way to mobile phones, nor has time-waster Farmville landed on Windows Phone. Thankfully Russian programmer Alawar Entertainment brings u.s.a. Subcontract Frenzy two as an Xbox Live title. It provides an extremely casual version of agronomics rather than an actual simulation, but the theme and unique gameplay are still worthy of notice.

Little business firm on the prairie

Farm Frenzy 2 Logo

Farm Frenzy 2 is broken up into a whopping 90 levels. Starting resource and goals vary by level, though the object is always to collect a certain amount of one or more products. Upon reaching the goal, y'all'll receive a bronze, silver, or gold medal, depending on completion times.

Each level is visually identical – you lot've got a big dirt area in the middle of the screen, a well located at the elevation of the dirt, and spots on the left and right for buildings. Tapping the well fills your water bucket, which in turn allows you to constitute grass in the dirt for animals to eat. Animals roam around in the clay surface area, consuming the grass until it'due south gone. If you don't keep grass planted, they will starve and die. Drawing water from the well costs coin though, as does but about everything else yous can exercise. This game is a combination of resource and fourth dimension management.

Run across, there are several kinds of livestock, which y'all either start with or manually purchase, depending on the level. Each 1 produces a different blazon of resource: chickens lay eggs; pigs make meat (without dying, somehow); cows squirt milk; and ostriches drop feathers. You tin can sell these products by sending them to town on a truck, whose progress is displayed at the top-right corner of the screen. The more expensive the animal, the more valuable its product.

Selling eggs and raw meat for money brings in some scratch, only to really increase your earnings you'll desire to procedure products into more expensive appurtenances. For each item type (eggs, milk, etc.) in that location is a corresponding edifice that turns it into a new item. You tin sell these new items for profit, or process them into even more costly stuff – with the right building. Some goods even require things your farm doesn't make – for instance, y'all demand ice trays in club to plow steak into frozen meat. You tin can send off for things via plane, ordering in quantities of one, 5, or x. It takes time for the plane to return and airdrop stuff into the field, simply the payoff for making stuff that manner is highly worthwhile.

Farm Frenzy 2

On top of collecting and selling goods, players also need to manage storage space. Everything you collect takes upward room in a storehouse, with larger and more than valuable items mostly taking upward more than infinite. Information technology'due south entirely possible to fill up the storehouse and have no room to collect the stuff buildings and animals are producing; anything that sits on the ground too long disappears. Selling things expediently is one remedy, but you'll often want to invest in a larger storehouse.

Similar the storehouse, most everything tin can exist upgraded for a little (or a lot) of money. Upgraded trucks return from town faster and tin carry more items at once. Improved wells allow more grass to be planted between refills. Upgrading buildings allows them to process more items at one time, profoundly expediting production. And if y'all need to make basic items like eggs faster, then buy more chickens. Deciding when and what to upgrade is generally a thing of personal preference, though some upgrades volition be essential in reaching gold medal completion times.

Don't feed the bears

Farm Frenzy 2

Fourth dimension limits aren't the only thing players need to sentry out for as they tend their farms. At whatever moment, one or more than bears could drop down from the sky and outset destroying whichever animals or products it touches. Bears come in several varieties, including savage pandas. Why do bears assail the farm instead of wolves or wild cats, you ask? Because in Soviet Russia, bear attacks y'all! That'south my all-time guess, anyhow.

To stop a bear, tap it furiously until it'south caged. From there you can either tap it again to move it to the storehouse or wait a while and it'll disappear. Bears sell for decent money, but they have up a ton of room in the storehouse and truck, so it's often important not to actually collect them afterwards applying the cage. In the estrus of the moment you might cease up collecting the bear anyway and ruining your aureate medal run on a level, which is annoying. Also aggravating: livestock doesn't try to avoid the bears, and the bears even fall directly onto them sometimes, giving players no chance to salvage the brainless animal. Once more, this normally forces a restart.

More quirks

A few more issues stem from Farm Frenzy 2'southward origin as a PC game. The final level takes about xxx minutes to complete, which is ridiculous for a mobile phone game. Similarly, the icons for upgrading buildings are tiny and hard to tap accurately in the heat of the moment. I occasionally replaced an important edifice with i I didn't demand due to their icons being then scrunched together. A picayune optimization for mobile phones wouldn't have hurt, but they're non game-breaking issues.

One more matter: the game never informs players that animals are sellable. I struggled with some early levels because I didn't know I could sell my excess critters for money. A web search solved the trouble, but the tutorial text should accept been amend.

Achievements

Farm Frenzy 2

Farm Frenzy 2'southward Achievements are mostly like shooting fish in a barrel, but many of the descriptions make little sense and seem to be poorly translated. For instead, what does "For deliberation" tell the player? Is in that location a deliberate push button? Of course not. Thankfully Isaaccummins' splendid Achievement Guide makes sense of those vague objectives.

The most challenging Accomplishment will be Aureate Goose, for earning a aureate medal on every level. Some phase's gold medal times leave well-nigh no room for error – I failed v-7 minute levels past merely i or 2 seconds on more than than one occasion. Achievement hunters will want to use this gold medal guide in order to save a lot of headaches.

Overall Impression

While farming may have lost its glamour in industrialized societies, it still provides a unique and solid foundation for a game. Subcontract Frenzy 2's resource management is both challenging and entertaining every bit players rush to harvest some goods, create others, and brand every trip to the market count. The baroque art way and esoteric pattern decisions like the use of bears as antagonists are slightly off-putting, however they somewhen endear just by virtue of being then dissimilar. Farm Frenzy 2's 90 levels will likely take more than 10 hours to master, merely considering the objectives, resource, and fourth dimension limits vary and then much from level to level, it doesn't go old before the end. Hither's hoping Alawar brings the remaining Farm Frenzy sequels like Viking Heroes to Windows Phone too.

Farm Frenzy ii costs $2.99 and in that location is a gratuitous trial. Just lookout out for bears on your way to the Marketplace.

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