Review Time: Plants Vs. Zombies

Plants Vs. Zombies caught me by surprise. I honestly didn't know a single thing about the game until several days after it was released. But after hearing a fair bit of positive buzz, I decided to check it out. What I got was one of my favorite gaming experiences this year.

The premise is simple. Play takes place on a grid. Zombies approach from the right, you set up plants on the left to attack them. Zombies will eat the plants if you don't take them out fast enough, and if they manage to reach your house, you lose. It's the wrinkles in the framework that make the game interesting. Every ten or so levels, your playfield will change. For example, there's no natural sunlight at night time, so you'll rely more on mushrooms to build your army. The roof, on the other hand, is ramped, so the plants that shoot straight ahead will have only limited usefulness. After most levels, you'll gain access to more plants that let you work out different strategies. You may use Ice Pea Shooters to slow down the zombies' walking speed to give you more time to take them out. Or maybe put up a line of Wall-nuts to completely halt their progress for a while. Or perhaps use Cherry Bombs to take out whole groups at once.

The plants aren't the only side with a wide variety, though. You'll face everything from football-playing zombies to bobsledders to bungee-jumpers to hulking behemoths that throw smaller zombies past your front line. You'll have to come up with different ways of getting rid of each enemy. There are a lot of ways to play, and you can have quite a bit of fun just going back and replaying levels using different sets of plants. Of course, if replaying levels isn't your thing, there's a surprising amount of extra content here. As you play, you'll access a variety of mini-games (Including the always-addictive "Beghouled"), Survival stages, and puzzle levels, including a gametype where you lead the zombies against the plants. All of these modes reward you with money you can use to access the game's most powerful plants, or to help you build a zen garden, or purchase other items to help you become a Zombie Genocider. In other words, even after you've completed the 50-stage campaign, you'll have a lot of reasons to keep coming back to the game.

If I had to levy a complaint against Plants Vs. Zombies, it's that the real challenge doesn't begin until relatively late. Despite this fact, though, it's continued to draw me back in, weeks after I bought it. Even outside of the gameplay elements, it has great humor, awesome music, and an art style that managed to strike a chord with me. All these parts combined to make a game that, quite simply, I have a blast playing. I'd recommend Plants Vs. Zombies to anyone.

Score: 9/10
Developer/Publisher: Popcap Games
Price: $20 from Popcap directly
$10 on Steam.