7 Bit Arcade

You may or may not be familiar with Peggle and Bejewled. These internet indie behemoths have been ripping it up for a few years now across the tubes.

Plants vs Zombies is perhaps the piece de la resistance of Popcap Games, the progenitor of those previously mentioned modern classics.

If you consider the name, then you automatically should have some sense of the ridiculous yet charming tone the game cultivates. In this cute and cartoony universe the player must see off the zombie apocalypse with nothing more than home produce. The zombies are at the gate, traipsing across your lawn, and you have to fight them off by strategically planting a number of different types of plant (with different abilities) across your lawn.

The most obvious strength of this title must be the concept and art direction. It is utterly charming and always amusing, yet it never seems twee. Every plant and zombie is distinctive and has a personality, which just endears them to you immensely. I have to commend the sound design as well, the sounds made by the various plants and zombies just seem right. The music starts out genteel and childlike, ramping up a little as the pace of an attack picks up.

This isn’t some light and fluffy kiddy game though, because like the other big Popcap games, Plants vs Zombies has a rock solid core gameplay experience. Although you will probably breeze through the initial levels, which are really just an extended tutorial, it really does get challenging as the game progresses, throwing various different spanners into the works of your carefully planned Melon Magineux Line. Some levels see insidious fog creeping across the map to obscure your view of the battlefield, leaving you dangerously exposed to nasty surprises. Others feature water areas that require to you use aquatic plant types lest the zombie scuba divers break through into your homestead.

Just as different plants have different abilities, so do different zombies. Some are deceased Olympians, pole vaulting over impediments, whilst others have donned armour in the form of buckets and traffic cones in order to better survive the onslaught of peas, cabbages and various other dangerous flora that stands between them and your braaaaaains. At the start of each level you are given a short preview of the zombies you face and then allowed to choose what plants you will use in your defence.

It’s not dissimilar in format from Tower Defence games in that your emplacements are stationary, and you are relying on careful positioning and forethought to counter what potential enemies might come your way. Resource management consists of planting and protecting sunflowers, which gradually produce sunlight you must collect over time. Different plants cost different amounts of sunlight to plant and are also limited by cool-downs, so an effective build order becomes a necessity, especially in some of the later levels. There is immense satisfaction in building an impenetrable fortress of anthropomorphised fruit and veg and watching the zombie horde collapse under the weight of your suppressing pea-fire.

Once you finish the main campaign, the game still has lots for you to do. There is a very extensive set of challenge modes and mini games that will test your gardening skills to the limit, and a cute meta-game that involves collecting and nurturing potted plants for your Zen garden. You also collect money as you play, which can be spent on various upgrades to your arsenal, such as the Gatling Pea which can upgrade your regular pea shooters into hyper speed engines of zombie death.

So, lest I seem a gushing fan-boy, onto criticisms (never let it be said I am anything but an even handed and unbiased judge); the main one being that the difficulty curve can be a bit steep. The ramp up from being moderately challenging to downright fiendish seems to happen very quickly, and in some of the later levels (especially when a new enemy type is introduced) you really don’t stand much of a chance on the first play-through, when you have little idea of what to expect and how to prepare for it. It feels very frustrating when you have taken what seems to be a viable selection of plants to defend with, only to be overwhelmed by a new kind of zombie for which you just weren’t prepared. Over all though, this is a pretty minor niggle. I generally approve of the slightly more old fashioned design philosophy that sees players tested rather than holding their hands through the game, and the joy of video games is that even when you fail abjectly and totally, you can always try again.

The only other thing I can complain about is that there is a huge number of plants for you to choose from, but many of them are simply not worth using. You will most likely develop your core of about 4-5 plants which you will use almost every level, with only a few minor variations to counter specific zombie threats. This leaves many of the more exotic and quirky plants left in the cold, totally unused, as you just can’t justify taking them in favour of more effective species.

Distribution stuff now; the game is available for both Mac and PC, and there is a web-based version as well, which you can find here . The web version is essentially the same as the downloadable demo in terms of content.

The full game will cost you £14.95 if you buy it from Popcap’s website, but if you are a clever PC user you can get it for a much more palatable £6.99 from Steam at the time of writing (Mac users are used to overpaying for things though, so I’m sure they won’t be too upset).

The full price is the teensiest bit steep for an indie title like this if you ask me, but if you can get it at £6.99 then I would not hesitate to heartily recommend you buy that shizzle.#

I will give this game 4.5 plushy Mario Piranha Plants out of 5.

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