Plants vs Zombies
On a whim I decided about two weeks ago to give this a game a shot since I hadn’t actually played it, but had heard that it was worth a shot. How little did I know …
Gameplay
The biggest thing about this game is that the it is simple enough to play, yet you can make so many choices as to how you do any given level. To fight off the zombies you need to plant a wide array of offensive or defensive plants, which are paid for using “sun” which drops from the sky on daylight levels as well as sunflowers, or sun-shrooms which are basically glowing mushrooms. So with the exception of these mandatory sun generating plants you can choose anything you have available in your arsenal.
There are essentially 50 levels with 10 per daylight, night, pool, fog and roof cycle to work your way through. Every few levels you get something a little different where you just get a conveyor belt of random plants to use which spices things up a little.
Graphics
The cartoony nature of the game actually makes it quite clean and simple, yet jovial and not distracting. Of course this was designed originally for tablets and mobile devices, so on a computer you probably just want to run it in windowed mode rather than fullscreen as it becomes pixelated and nasty. There is a lot of attention to detail though, from the wal-nuts mouths slowly turning into frowns as they are eaten and the gradual degradation of the zombies as they die, which has to be appreciated in terms of game design
Extras
One of my favourite parts of this game is that there are a series of mini games and puzzles to work through once you have completed a number of levels, letting you mix it up a little. Plus you can have a “zen garden” where you grow plants to earn money and buy upgrades, invariably for the last couple of weeks I have had Stinky the Snail running around collecting coins whilst I get on with other things.
Replay value
I can see myself hopping back into the end level puzzles every once in a while in order to get the old grey matter going again from time to time but probably won’t touch the Adventure mode again really which is the only downside. Like Angry Birds once you’ve gone through the levels, there is very little draw to do them again.
Overall I really enjoyed this game, there was more than enough to justify its £3.49 (at time of posting) price on Steam or similar for Android / iOS. Whilst I haven’t completed all the achievements they will be easy enough to get in the future, total time to complete was probably 15-20 hours if you discount leaving Stinky to make me money whilst I did other things!
