Plants vs Zombies Review: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

PopCap Games is known for making games that are both accessible and life-cripplingly addictive.  Classics like Bejeweled, Peggle, and Bookworm Adventures have sucked away countless hours of productivity from workplaces the world over.  Now, in their latest attempt to garner every spare moment of your time, PopCap has released the zombies!  But does Plants vs Zombies live up to the legacy of the PopCap name?  Or have their darks arts finally brought a Frankenstein monster to life?

The gameplay in Plants vs Zombies, like in all PopCap titles, is deceptively simple.  As a property owner, you’re tasked with protecting your home from the oncoming zombie invasion.  Their weakness?  Plants.  But these are no ordinary plants.  Each serves a special purpose or has a specific attack that it can use to take down the zombies.  The goal of the game is to eliminate all of the zombies each round without letting any of them reach your house.

Some critics are claiming this is PopCap’s take on the tower defense genre, and while it’s easy to see where they’re coming from, they’re not entirely right.  Plants vs Zombies feels more akin to a game of football than it does tower defense.  The zombies start in the street (their end zone) and move their way from one side of the screen to the other in an attempt to reach the house (your end zone).  Tower defense games generally include things like pre-determined paths or set entrances and exits.  Because the zombies can enter from any point in the screen and continue along that path, there’s a different element in play than you’d find in a traditional tower defense game.  But then again, that’s PopCap for you — nothing they ever do is traditional.  I think that’s a lot of the reason almost everything they touch turns to gold.

Still, a lot of tower defense elements still exist in the game.  Money, for example, is a must have for expanding your army.  You’ll need to earn “sunshine” to purchase more plants, which can come from sunflowers (and additional plants later in the game) or from the sun itself on the daytime levels.  There’s a huge variety of plants available in the game, with a new one usually unlocked at the end of each stage.

A good deal of strategy can be implemented in the game as well.  You’ll only have so many seed slots available, which means picking and choosing the types of plants you want to use wisely.  Every ten stages your environment will change slightly, adding in a whole new element of gameplay.  Night levels, for example, mean you need to work extra hard to get sunshine by can use mushrooms in your fight against the undead (mushrooms being unavailable in the day).  Other levels might introduce a backyard pool and aquatic plants.  There’s enough variety here to really keep you on your toes.

In addition to the variety offered by the changing environments, the stages are occassionally broken up by mini-games like “whack-a-zombie” or “wall-nut bowling.”  The mini-games are a nice touch, and help to keep things fresh in a game that plays largely the same throughout.

Plants vs Zombies is great fun, and smacks of the delightful PopCap personality that we’ve all come to know and love.  The only real complaint to be had is that it’s just too easy.  Previous PopCap games have always offered that extra level of challenge that makes their games exciting for players of any skill level.  But after awhile, you’ll get into a groove with Plants vs. Zombies and find yourself getting through stages with zero difficulty.  The game tries to keep throwing new things at you like changing conditions and zombies with different strengths and weaknesses, and while these keep things fresh they don’t provide the level of challenge that might incentivize you to keep playing.

Plants vs. Zombies is a fantastic title that puts a new spin on the tower defense genre, and will easily be remembered as another gem in PopCap’s crown.  It’s something that should be experienced by everybody.  Just be prepared for a game with a lot of personality and charm, but not a lot of challenge.

Plants vs Zombies is available from PopCap Games for $19.95.  A free trial is also available.

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