When I hit play on EA’s new “deep dive” trailer for the upcoming Plants vs Zombies Replanted, I didn’t expect to be presented with a fake stream featuring two actors pretending to be hip and cool content creators playing the new remastered version of PopCap’s beloved tower defense game. Yet that’s what this new trailer is. It’s so strange and cringey.
Announced earlier this year, Plants vs. Zombies Replanted is a 4K remastered version of the original 2009 PvZ with some new content as well as bonus features like the co-op mode first seen in the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. Think of it as the ultimate version of the popular game, which will finally be available on consoles and PC later this month. I’m very excited to replay PvZ after not touching the game for many, many years. But a new trailer from EA showing off PvZ Replanted nearly made me question my excitement for this remastered classic.
Released on October 14, EA’s “Deep Dive Trailer” does indeed show off a lot of the upcoming PvZ Replanted, including a new perma-death mode and the return of all the minigames found in past ports. That’s great. What’s not great is that all of this information is, for some reason, delivered to us via two fake streamers playing the game on a fake stream, complete with fake chat and forced reactions. Here’s the trailer:
Yeah, it’s pretty bad. After watching it the first time, I felt like it must have been nearly 10 minutes long, but it’s not even 4 minutes. It just felt so much longer. I guess hearing a fake streamer yell out “Spud Yeah!” can make you lose track of time.
The comments below the trailer are, predictably, not positive, with many excited about the game but unsure why EA decided to market it this way. The top-voted comment simply states: “‘How do you do fellow kids’ trailer.”
Yeah, teens and kids aren’t stupid. They’ll see right through this obvious corporate-approved attempt to recreate a Twitch stream in the most sanitized way possible, say “Cringe,” and move on. PvZ is good. Just show people how much better this version looks and some of the new features. That’s all you gotta do to get people on board. The $20 price tag is also a great selling point that this trailer fails to mention.
Anyway, bad, cringey trailer aside, I’m still excited to play Plants vs Zombies Replanted when it arrives on consoles and PC on October 23.
