Plants vs Zombies!!!

Hey…What was that noise?  Oh no, was that?…  Crap!  It is!  Zombies are coming to eat our brains!  Quick!  Plant some seeds!

Okay, I’ll stop, but that’s the basic set up for the new Popcap game called Plants vs Zombies.  At its core, this is essentially a “tower defense” game where the player tries to fend off waves of incoming enemies.  It sounds very basic, but the high level of polish and unique style this game has make it worth checking out.

The main goal of the game is to keep approaching zombies from reaching your house by using garden plants to shoot, freeze, explode, and otherwise incapacitate them.  The playing field is divided into a grid, wherein players can place a variety of plants. The player is limited in that each type of plant has a recharge time and “costs” a certain amount of sunshine.  Sunflowers can be used to produce more sunshine, but the recharge times mean that you can’t rely on just one type of plant.

And speaking of plants, there are quite a few to choose from.  Offensive types range from projectiles to bombs, while defensive measures include walls and land mines.  Most of the plants are at least passably useful, and you’ll likely find that later levels push you to try new plants to counter new types of zombies.

There is a decent amount of variety in the zombies you’ll face; the generic undead you initially encounter are joined in later levels by all sorts of reanimated freaks, and some of them appear to have a thing for Flipper.  The differences between them are for more than just good looks; for example, the pole vaulter zombie can use his…uhhh…zombie pole…to get over the walls you place in the way.

With all of the different of plants and enemies, this game winds up being deeper than one might first expect, especially when different terrain types get added into the mix.  At the same time, all of the action is orchestrated with the mouse only, which keeps the controls easy for newcomers to learn.

The presentation in this game is top notch.  While it won’t win any awards for photo-realistic graphics, the art style is clean, interesting, and just campy enough to make it frigging funny.  Complementing the great visuals is a truly cool audio experience.  The music in this game is fantastic.  Period.  The zombies sound suitably undead, though your in-game neighbor Dave is heavily channeling the spirit of Scooby Doo…

By not taking itself too seriously, Plants vs Zombies has actually made a really fun zombie game (for any other zombie game-making companies that might be reading this).  There is even a collection of mini-games that opens after completing a few levels in the adventure mode.  I’d have to summarize this game as being the strategic bastard child of Alice Greenfingers and Dead Rising…in a really good way.