FarmVille (free) is one of those social networking games you either love or hate. Either way, you can’t deny that Zynga has produced a beautiful iPad version of its popular game. The graphics look great, and the controls are simple and intuitive. Now, you can kill even more time by harvesting your crops on the go.
You start off with a square area of land on which to grow your crops. You can easily build a new plot to plant some seeds in. The controls consist of simply tapping and dragging across the screen. You can pinch to zoom in and out. Once you’ve set up a plot, you can choose which crop you’d like to grow. Each crop has a different harvest time ranging from a couple of hours to multiple days. The longer it takes to harvest, the more money you can sell them for. Herein lies the frustrating part of these types of games. You need to wait, sometimes for days, to be able to advance in the game. You need coins to purchase buildings, decorations, trees and other items for your farm. If you don’t have enough coins, you’ll need to wait for your crop to be harvested. If you miss the push notification that your crop is ready, you’ve blown your chance. This is where the scamming part comes into play. When you become addicted to the game, and you really need more coins for that new tractor, you can spend your real money, and purchase coins through the app. If you don’t have any self-control, this game could quickly burn a hole in your pocket.
Aside from the risk of going bankrupt by purchasing virtual money with real money, the application is a polished, intuitive and pleasant version of its Facebook counterpart. Your farm is always synced with the server, so you can start playing on your iPad, and continue on any computer with Internet access. However, there are times when the app will go back to the main menu because the connection to the server has been lost. This doesn’t happen often, but is annoying when it does.
I really only have one complaint about the app: It doesn’t remember your preferences for sound and music. So, if you always want music and sound effects to play, you’ll need to manually select it every time you open the application.
If you’re a FarmVille fanatic, then this is a must-own app. However, if you’re not into it, the iPad version won’t change your mind.
