E.T.: The Green Planet: Whoops I Did It Again

In honor of the 30th anniversary of releasing the Atari 2600 E.T. game, Universal has recreated that special magic with a new E.T. game on the iOS...

...and aside from outstanding graphics on the iOS, this version is a mess, too. What should have been a simple farming/breeding sim game, like Smurf Village, is instead a broken, convoluted train wreck in "ET: The Green Planet".

The game contains a  back-story about helping another planet come back to life, but then you're building a launch pad and spaceship to travel to other planets to find parts to assemble E.T.'s Speak-n-Spell SOS transmitter. Except the spaceship only worked twice for me in the game. There's quests to gain XP that rely solely on a resource you can only acquire if someone visits your farm. The camera that will inexplicable pan and zoom onto your E.T., not to be confused with THE E.T., who is apparently too busy because he's making a guest appearance at an opening of a Gamestop in El Segundo. Your E.T. doesn't do anything. You can purchase a grand total of one (1) type of plant to grow with the only resource you produce\harvest. All other plants require other players to come by and drop off a special resource when they visit your farm, which never happens. Breeding new plants purposefully destroys the two parent plants, which theoretically might take a player days to grow, assuming other players visit and drop off precious resources, which they don't do, so it's a moot point.

I'm baaaaack....

I'm currently stalled at Level 6 with nothing to do. It might be free, but it's still not really worth the effort unless the bugs and design flaws are addressed. The in-game graphics and animation are top-notch, but it's a Potemkin Village when it comes to gameplay. E.T. - phone home and get a new agent.