Brace Yourselves: Farmville 2 Has Landed

Now might be a good time to guide Grandma away from Facebook. Despite having had to navigate through some troubled waters as of late, Zynga has bravely pushed on ahead and released Farmville 2, the isometric 3D answer to the biggest source of cubicle-based procrastination and neighbor-bothering since Hamster Dance.

While it's bound to spam up your Facebook walls, Farmville 2 boasts a few new features that actually sound just a little less evil than the time management apocalypse that is its predecessor. Here's the skinny from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

[F]riends’ avatars now appear and work on your farm, fewer aspects of your farm are guilt and pressure-driven (no animals becoming sad due to neglect, for instance), and – perhaps most importantly – the kingpin of all obnoxious social features, the “energy” system, is gone. Granted, every action now requires water – with a limit placed on how much you can collect per day. That said, you can up it by spending in-game currency on wells, so there’s no longer an utterly arbitrary playtime cut-off point looming over your every action. […]

There’s also a crafting system in place to hook folks who are looking for a bit more depth, though it’s still just a means to the end of selling off slightly different items. But you can make omelettes now. Who doesn’t like those?

It remains to be seen whether Farmville 2 is the golden goose Zynga needs to hoist it out of its current fiscal rut, but it's at least a little less predatory than Zynga's usual exploitative casual gaming fare. If you're the sort to stare into the cow-clicking abyss until it stares back, head on over to Facebook and give it a try.

(Or just, you know, play Cow Clicker.)

Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun.