A walking corpse reminiscent of a Thriller Michael Jackson starts shambling your way. Surprisingly, he pauses, spins around to some disco lights, and a dancing Thriller-esque horde of zombies appear. Hilarity ensues.
Already home to a few extremely addictive games like Peggle, Popcap continues to sink its claws into our souls by consistently churning out addictive games that rival your local drug dealer’s premium “stuff”. Its latest addition to the bunch includes an appealing tower defense game and spins a new twist on the genre. Complex cartoons, mini-games, survival modes, and an explosion of color and cute all help to set Plants Vs. Zombies apart from the already overcrowded tower defense market. Prepare to be wholly enslaved.
At first, Plants Vs. Zombies seems relatively simple and a no-brainer for seasoned tower defenders. In short: zombies are outside of your house, looming hungrily. They want to crunch your plants and eat your brains. You want to keep your head, so to speak, so you set up shop with a few zombie-eating plants straight out of Little Shop of Horrors and the battle begins. It’s our planet…it’s their war.
My plant layout always turns out to be a perfect pattern. There must be a sense of order to defeat the hordes; chaos theory will not always cut it.
The zombies all stumble in from the right side only, and you are given five rows to defend and place your killer plants. If you’re zombies manage to eat through your plants without harm, then they will enter your home and it’s game over, “The zombies ate your brainssss!”. Still, the game and the zombies appear fairly simple to beat. However, as you’re introduced to more and more ‘types’ of zombies, you’ll soon realize it becomes a bit trickier than meets the eye. An Olivia Newton John Physical type zombie carries a pole vault that let them skip over the precious bobbing brown plants that stand as barriers. Jamaican Bob Sled team zombies attempt to run over your plants with, you guessed it: a giant sled. Newspaper holding zombies (those that croaked in the middle of “dropping their kids off at the pool”) become cranky when you destroy their reading material, exposing their undies, and charge through your plants at incredible speeds. My personal favorites include the Thriller dance zombies and the rubber duckie zombies found in the pool.
Gameplay mechanics are very straight-forward. The player is given six slots to fill with plants of their choices in the beginning and, with some money that you collect from killing zombies, you can upgrade to more. By the time you near the end of the Adventure mode, a whopping 40 different plants are available for your utilization. The simple pea-shooters you begin with can later be transformed into fireballs, special mushrooms turn your zombies into fighting machines for your team, and grave plants destroy embedded tombstones. The sunshine plants are really where it’s at though-without them, you cannot ‘afford’ to plant the other damaging plants.
The challenge in the game lies within your ability to choose the right plants for the right environment (Lily pads for pools, mushrooms for nighttime) and place them in a successful manner. It is almost like a game of chess, and the perfect arrangement can be obtained only if you know how to begin it right.
What're ya buyin'?
The various mini-games within Plants Vs. Zombies are also quite the satisfying bunch. Bowling through zombies, pounding them with your hammer, and more are all available to you in little side quests in Adventure mode as well as unlockable once the mode is completed. Be warned, the survival modes aren’t no walk in park. Your ol’ pal Crazy Dave gifts you with a few surprisingly difficult challenges. Finally, if you still haven’t had enough zombies, Popcap’s official site hosts a “Zombinator”, allowing you to create your own special zombies.
Plants Vs. Zombies sports bright, colorful graphics that lend itself to a cartoon feel. Everything about the atmosphere, including the bouncy music, presents a quirky, friendly vibe that ultimately makes it safe for the kiddos. Crudely scrawled notes await you at every other level or so and are available for review in your almanac: How about a midnight znack of ice cream and brains? -The zombies. Translation: priceless.
I prefer the cherries. Bombs, that is.
Recommendation
Popcap’s deceptively simple and charming design of Plants Vs. Zombies manages to steal a large number of your hours and instill a pleasant accomplishment into your day. Featuring 50 levels of gameplay and over 50 more once you’ve beaten the main adventure, Plants Vs. Zombies bears enticing, near unlimited replayability which more than warrants the reasonable $10 price tag. Fun for the whole family, Plants Vs Zombies is an incredibly addictive yet satisfying experience that will win over casual and hardcore gamers alike.
Plants Vs. Zombies
System: PC, Mac
Developer: PopCap Games
Publisher: PopCap Games
Find: Steam
All reviews are based on final retail code unless otherwise noted
May 11th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Your plant deployment is terrible…just terrible.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Lmao that RE4 caption was perfect, Melissa.
Wow, only $10? Okay, I so have to get this game.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
PopCap are super-leet. Shame my PC isn’t - I honestly don’t think it’ll be able to run this.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
… I am honestly tempted, now XD
May 12th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
You had me at tower defense game.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Me too Yoshi!! I’m a sucker for tower defense games, and this one incorporates some of my favorite people, ZOMBAYS!!!
May 14th, 2009 at 6:26 am
I’ve heard so much about this game but held back… andddd.. yeah not anymore.
Zombies? Yes. Plants? Yes.
Both… /runs to the mailbox looking for bday card money
May 27th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Okay? This is a weird game concept, but sounds like a goofy zombie defense. At least you don’t get nightmares from a daisy or an apple, unlike those evil brain eating peeps from the graveyard. This should be a pretty good game.