Game Reviews

Green Farm 2

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iOS
| Green Farm 2
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Green Farm 2
|
iOS
| Green Farm 2

If you ask any non-gamer to list five video games, there's a very good chance that Zynga's FarmVille will get a mention - after all, it's almost impossible to visit Facebook without seeing it in one form or another.

The popular farming simulation has spawned numerous homages and clones since it first appeared on Mark Zuckerberg's social network, including Gameloft's latest attempt Green Farm 2.

These FarmVille-inspired games aren't always of the highest quality - some are downright awful - but the French publisher's new offering manages to avoid joining the junk pile.

Dig deep

As in FarmVille, your aim in Green Farm 2 is to turn a small plot of land into a thriving farm by packing it to the rafters with crops, animals, trees, and a selection of money-making production buildings.

Despite a variety of tasks to keep you busy, the majority of your time will be spent ploughing, planting, fertilising, and harvesting crops, all of which are completed with simple taps of your device's screen - nothing new if you've played this kind of game before.

Naturally, each variety of crop has its own growth cycle, which ranges from around 15 minutes to a couple of days.

This means Green Farm 2 - like most freemium titles - is best enjoyed in bite-sized sessions, unless you're willing to pay real cash to purchase fertiliser and speed things up.

When a crop is fully grown it begins to wither at the same rate that it grew, meaning you have to harvest it in a timely fashion. Push notifications will alert you to this process, but they don't appear to work reliably.

Each successful action you make rewards you with a small number of gold coins and experience points that are used to level-up. This, subsequently, gives you access to new content, such as better flowers and veggies, and new animals.

Green Farm 2 features plenty of other activities to keep you busy, such as quests, visiting your friends, sending gifts, crafting items, and looking after animals, but these require little more than further taps of your screen.

Big sale

All items, livestock, and buildings can be purchased from the in-game store for coins or for Cash - Green Farm 2's premium currency.

Some of the store's more desirable items - including essentials like energy - are only purchasable with the latter form of money, so you'll find yourself dipping into your real-world pockets to grab everything the game has to offer.

If you can live without buying a replica Eiffel Tower, however, you can easily progress up the ranks with just the items that are available for coins - which are earned in abundance.

This makes in-app purchases feel more of an option (to speed up your progress) than a necessity (to progress at all).

Despite a lack of any fresh concepts and the presence of fragmented gameplay, Green Farm 2 is one of the App Store's best FarmVille-esque experiences.

You won't find anything new here, but a great visual style and the absence of obligatory in-app purchases makes Gameloft's farming simulation worth a look.

Green Farm 2

Green Farm 2 doesn't reinvent the wheel, but balanced in-app purchases and colourful graphics make it worth your while
Score
Anthony Usher
Anthony Usher
Anthony is a Liverpool, UK-based writer who fell in love with gaming while playing Super Mario World on his SNES back in the early '90s. When he isn't busy grooming his beard, you can find him replaying Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII for the umpteenth time. Aside from gaming, Anthony likes hiking, MMA, and pretending he’s a Viking.