EXT. SUBURBIA – GARDEN – MID AFTERNOON
A man stands across the street from a typical one story house. He’s dressed in business attire holding a newspaper.
CLOSE UP
On closer inspection it becomes evident that all is not well with him. His pants are tattered and his shirt and tie splattered in blood. His face is a dark green tone and through a mouth held agape poke a few scraggly teeth.
He’s a ZOMBIE and he wants to eat your BRAINS!
This could easily be the first page of a mediocre zombie movie script, a medium budget Romero knock off, or a 28 Weeks Later straight to DVD sequel. It could also be the opening sequence of a zombie comedy, or musical, since it’s in vogue to appropriate the zombie mythos to all sorts of colorful cinematic diversions these days. But I’m obviously not taking time to regale you with my opinion of zombie cinema, this is a Mac games website after all. I’m here because the gents (and ladies) at PopCap have added a very special twist to the Zombie formula…
PLANTS! A plethora of ZOMBIE slaying PLANTS!
Now I’ve had some experience killing zombies over my gameplay years. My choice of weapon has always been a shotgun or in the case of zombie-like-aliens-in-space, a laser cutter. But I have to say that pea shooting plants are in a close second and Plants vs. Zombies could easily be one of the most delightful games I’ve played in a long while.
At it’s core PvZ is a tower defense game. You’re tasked with placing different types of plants (towers) to protect your back or front yard from the zombie invasion. Your yards are divided into 5 rows that you must defend to keep the zombies from entering your home. To do so you’re given a broad spectrum of different flowers, plants, and at night, mushrooms, each with different capabilities.
You’ll eventually unlock 45 different plants that assist you in keeping your brain from becoming a zombie buffet. I’ve played the game for a solid two weeks and have only unlocked 13 plants. Everyone of the 13 plants I’ve unlocked are a delightful mix of quirky and useful, allowing for an incredible sense of adaptable strategy from one level to the next. I could easily spend the rest of the review describing in detail everything from my zombie mind controlling shrooms (something the CIA tried at some point) to the zombie eating plants that can swallow an enemy whole in one bite. I could do that but I won’t. I’d really deprive you of one of the great joys of this game, which is discovering the new and delightful ways in which to survive the zombie invasion.
You’re occasionally aided by your neighbor who seems well intentioned, but is just a little unstable with his tin pot for a hat. He’s the unofficial guide to the game’s various levels and eventually sets up shop where you can purchase new seeds using money that you pick up from zombie’s corpses (it’s not as messy as it sounds).
PvZ keeps things interesting by introducing zombies that can only be defeated by specific plants and different game play mechanics. There’s a level where instead of collecting sunshine to buy plants you get a constant stream of random plants queuing up, sort of like tetris pieces, which you then have to use to combat the wave of zombies. There’s also 19 other mini games I haven’t come across yet.
The game design is loads of fun with great animations and a eerie but playful soundtrack. My only issue (and this is shared by another of my favorite PopCap titles, Peggle) is that the standard game play is a floating window that is no where near full resolution on my iMac’s screen. Setting the game to run fullscreen is nice but the quality suffers a bit. But there in also lies the strength of Popcap’s games, as PvZ will run on even the most anemic Mac and it’s every bit as fun as heftier, more expensive titles.
This review took two weeks to write. Mainly because every time I’d sit down to review the game I’d start playing it and two hours later I’d have to eat or go do something else. So don’t try the game until you’ve gone to the loo, eaten, and finished any pending to do’s!
