Plants vs Zombies Review

“There’s a Zombie on your Lawn”

From the same maker of the insanely fun Insaniquarium, PopCap games bring you Plants vs Zombies. Plants vs Zombies is a tower defense game that puts you in your toes to fend off never-ending attacks from the horrible zombies. The main goal of the game is simple: Don’t let the zombies go inside your house and eat your brains out. Or like the zombies say on the game’s help screen:

Plants vs Zombies Features (from the official release news)

• Five different modes of play: Adventure, Survival, Puzzle, Zen Garden and Mini-Game Challenges
• 50 levels in the main Adventure mode and more than 50 more in the other game modes, with limitless replayability
• More than four dozen plants, from cherry bombs and peashooters to melon-pults, wall-nuts and sunflowers
• Dozens of different zombie types, including back-from-the-dead miners, businessmen, football players, even a zombie bobsled team!
• Suburban almanac tracks your progress and provides vital stats on plant and zombie types
• Crazy Dave’s trunk-o’-the-car shop where you can purchase special “power plants” and other zombie-exterminating tools as well as potted versions for your Zen Garden
• New fluid animation technology for prettier plants and zippier zombies
• 14 original musical pieces that dynamically adjust to the intensity of the game in real time
• So frighteningly fun you’ll soil your plants!

The zombies will come to you wave after wave so you need to make sure that you have enough defenses to fend off the Zombie’s attack. You don’t build laser towers or a missile defense system in Plants vs Zombies, but instead you’ll have to grow a variety of plants (and mushrooms) to do the job. Of course, planting these plants requires some “money” (hey, nothing is free in this world!). You need to collect the sun seeds that drop off the sky (during the daylight levels) or from the sunflower plants. Later during the game, you can also collect coins which give you the ability to upgrade your plants and buy more interesting items from the shop to help you in the war.

a 2D Tower Defense, easy but challenging enough

There are lots of different plants/mushrooms in Plants vs Zombies, but you have to unlock them as you play the game. For example, you have plants that:

• Shoot peas at the Zombies (pretty basic stuff)
• Convert a Zombie to fight alongside with you
• Explode like a nuclear blast but leaving a crater on the ground (disallow you to plant anything for a brief of time)
• Transform a pea that passes through it into a “firepea” (or a fireball); more damage

These varieties of plants give the player lots of strategy alternatives and different playstyle. Different friends of mine seem to favor different plants that suit his/her playstyle.

Plenty of Arsenals to help you out

However, the zombies will not go easy on you either. There are varieties of Zombies and they’ll get tougher and tougher each level. There are Zombies who wear protective “helmets” and even a “Michael Jackson” a la Thriller Zombie. What this Zombie does, it’s for you to see for yourself when you play Plants vs Zombies After you encounter these zombies though, their profile will be written on the Almanac (like a Wikipedia). The Almanac will let you know in details what each type of plant and zombie does.

Go, Jacko!

There are plenty of levels to keep you entertained and Plants vs Zombies is so fun to play. Each level usually gives you new things to play around with and to keep you interested to play. There are also different style of gameplay introduced depending on the levels so you won’t be bored doing the same thing over and over for a long period of time. There are puzzles, mini games, and a survival mode that can be unlocked at Plants vs Zombies. So even when you have finally beaten the Zombie Boss (the last boss), you’ll still have plenty to go with. You can even start the game all over again but this time, you’ll have access to every plant you have unlocked earlier. Even the mini games are creative and sound familiar to PopCap games fans, like the Zombiquaruim (from Insaniquarium) and Beghouled (from Bejeweled). There are many others that are too many to mention in this Plants vs Zombies Review post.

Plants vs Zombies Review Conclusion

Plants vs Zombies is fun, very addictive, and it will take lots of hours from your life. It’s not entirely difficult if you are a hardcore gamer but it’s not that entirely easy either on the later levels. If you are really into it, you can probably finish the game during the whole weekend. But of course, there are more mini games, puzzle games, and the survival mode for you to play after you have finished the single player “campaign”. It’s the type of game that will make you say “Just another level and I’ll go to sleep” but ended up playing the next level.

There is no story in Plants vs Zombies, which is a bit of a disappointment, but the game isn’t about the storyline. It’s about the fun twiddling what you should build next and seeing hordes of zombies fallen to your knees (or your plants’ knees). Unlocking different type of plants (and zombies) after each level give plenty of variety and uniqueness to the game on every level. It’s the type of game when you won’t get bored doing the same thing over and over. It is very well polished and well designed.

Insanely fun and a must play!

If you have played Insaniquarium, Peggle, and Bookworm Adventures, then you must add Plants vs Zombies into your PopCap games collection. I can’t wait for Plants vs Zombies 2. Please make one, PopCap!

If you haven’t watched the music video of the game (you will be forced to watch it anyway in the credits after you complete the game), here it is:

See larger image Plants vs. Zombies (CD-ROM) List Price: $19.99 USD New From: $14.43 In Stock Used from: $9.99 In Stock Release date August 18, 2009.