The property taxes may be too high, the air is filthy and your neighbor is crazy, but your home is your castle and zombies are hell bent at eating your brains and taking over your crib. With the democrats having taken away all your guns and the cops being too busy harassing minorities all that you have left at your disposal are your ferocious plants and mushrooms. Welcome to Plants vs Zombies, let the war begin!
PvZ is an action strategy game by PopCap Games and offers a new twist on the popular tower defense genre. There are five modes of play with the main one being adventure mode. Here you will defend your way to victory across 50 levels covering five different areas of your property from front lawn to rooftop. Each map is a rectangular grid whereby hungry zombies will approach from the right side in ever increasing amounts. Your job is to build up your defenses and prevent them from reaching the left side of the map which is the entrance to your home. To do so you will have place various plants to kill or block these brain eaters.
Your plants aren't free however and you need to collect the sun in order to fund your purchases. You do so by clicking on a sun icon that falls from the sky periodically or more importantly place sun generating plants such as sunflowers. With enough suns saved up you then spend them like currency by purchasing various plants from your card deck and placing them strategically on the map. The game will offer you dozens of different plants to choose from and their correct placement in a strategic order is key to winning.
Prior to each mission you create your deck of plants from the ones you have unlocked. At the start of the game you are allowed to choose only 7 per level so careful inspection of what map type you are on as well as what kind of enemies you will be facing off against is critical. Once the map begins you cannot change your deck without restarting the level so you will have to make do with your choices. Any time you use a card it will undergo a cooldown period before it can be used again. This requires you to carefully asses the timing of using various plants as the recharge delay can be most inconvenient at times when you realize you should have waited a bit longer for a more opportune moment.
Typical puzzle games feature many challenges that often induce sheer frustration at their complexity and difficulty but thankfully PvZ breaks the mold by offering straight up fun with very little frustration. During the entirety of the 50 levels spanning the adventure mode we failed only three times and all of those were concentrated on one of the ending levels as we struggled with finding the right way of dealing with a new super zombie. Otherwise with the game gradually and smartly introducing new plants for your arsenal as well as new zombies for you to contend with the learning curve maintained a very gradual and steady pace. Our only complaint is that the adventure mode is rather short and can be completed within a day or two, albeit that short time is filled with addicting "one more level" thrills.
Beyond the leveling adventure mode there are twenty mini games, eighteen puzzle maps and ten survival maps which span multiple rounds of attacks. We went through almost all of these and found the amount of enjoyment and longevity to be surprisingly even better than the adventure mode itself. Notably fun were the survival maps, especially the hard ones, which force you to build the ultimate defensive line and maintain it over multiple ever more difficult rounds. The final survival map called Endless is aptly named for its seemingly never ending rounds of mayhem. After 11 rounds our defenses were crushed and the ridiculousness that faced us on the 12th round proved to be insurmountable.
Players can collect coins dropped by zombies as well as accumulate money by completing levels. Your accumulated wealth can then be spent by purchasing items from the trunk of your neighbor's car. While in the real world that would be a dubious proposition at best, here is where you can purchase items to expand your deck size and plant improvements such as the very useful double sunflower. The fine details about all your purchases, collected plants and discovered zombies are described in the games almanac screen. Here you can study the strengths and weaknesses of everything in the game and better formulate a strategy for upcoming levels.
While most puzzle games feature simplistic two dimensional graphics and PvZ is no exception, nonetheless the color choices, animations, effects and sheer variety of plants and zombies combines into a very pleasing to look at game. The artwork speaks of significant effort and those efforts are not wasted as the artistic style goes a long way in improving ones enjoyment. Combined with equally pleasing sound effects and muted but appropriate "brains" voiceovers and the game is as enjoyable to look at as it is to play.
Overall Plants vs Zombies just could not have been done any better. The games low frustration factor, high entertainment, wonderful graphics and effects, lots of variety and a great selling price all combine into one of the best games of the year. Sometimes good things come in small packages and Plants vs Zombies delivers.
Summary: Great fun that is perfect for all.
GameSNAFU Rating: 5 out of 5
Sylvester "Annex" Rozylo
Executive Editor
