Tower defense games are the rage in the casual game market, everyone is building a tower defense game hoping to make it big and become the next top casual game. Once upon a time Bejeweled clones and derivatives would match-three their way up the sales charts but, today, things have changed.
Popcap has turned things around and released their own tower defense game that puts all others to shame: Plants vs. Zombies.
Popcap continues to use their working recipe in conjunction with Plants vs. Zombies: easy to grasp, difficult to master, impossible to put down. Throw the undead into the mix and you've got a tremendous good time. You're goal in this casual title is to stop a horde of zombies from invading the house ("tower") and eating the brains of its occupants. You do this by populating the garden with plants ("defenses") to slow down and, ultimately, re-kill the undead invaders.
Plants vs. Zombies differs in many ways from other tower defense genre games by removing the typical required component of money to build objects and replacing it with "sunshine." Everything is better with sunshine! A small subset of plants are capable of generating sunshine, sunflowers of course, and this is the basic energy required to "buy" new lawn defenses during battle. In many stages that occur during the daylight, sunshine falls naturally from the sky thus allowing you to build faster defenses against the zombie baddies without leaning, fully, upon your sunflower plants. Not all stages occur during the day, however, so you're techniques will be put to great challenge.
Adventure Mode
In Adventure Mode, you'll be granted a small set of plant weapons to take on a basic zombie onslaught and you'll continue the fight through 50 levels of fun, one-bye-one, each growing in difficulty and unique challenge. As the levels progress you'll be rewarded with new battle techniques in the form of plants that can defend, attack and grant special abilities to combat new breeds of zombies, 26-unique zombie attackers in all, that make a run at your home. The Adventure stages starts out slow and simple and advances to fast and challenging, perfect for the new player (victim?).
Although it's possible to collect 48 different plant breeds and crazy defense mechanisms, you're only able to bring a few into battle with you at the start of a stage. While you start with six slots of plant weapons, you'll be given opportunities to expand to nine total slots... but you have 48 unique items from which to choose! As you begin a stage you'll have an opportunity to see your zombie attackers and try to select the best weapons to defend the house from zombie attack.
Adventure mode is an exciting form of the Plant vs. Zombies game play and will be the launching point of practice and perfection of this tower defense title. Most of the game's weapons will be rewarded during Adventure Mode and you'll have discovered all the zombie hoards by the end of the adventure, culminating with an epic boss battle.
Survival Mode
Once you've completed 50 stages of Adventure Mode, you've now learned the skills required to take on Survival Mode. What, did you think the game was over? Not nearly. Popcap is known for their Survival Mode stages but Plants vs. Zombies takes it in a new direction by offering a trophy system for different Survival Mode challenges.
You're not going to take on a rushing horde of zombies indefinitely, you're going to travel through 10 levels of pain battling wave-after-wave of zombie destruction while building up the ultimate garden defense. If you do want to battle a wave of infinite zombie destruction, that is offered in Survival Mode as well but isn't the focus point of the mode. Between each large wave of zombies you'll be given a chance to change your defense slots with new weapons. Your current lawn defense stays as-is which allows you to select completely new items or item upgrades to work on the pre-established defense system. Persistent lawn defenses empowers you to trick-out your garden with the larger über weapons like the cob cannon which launches skud-missile style corn cobs into the sky and reigns terror upon the unsuspecting undead.
The corn cannon, gatling pea and winter melon require a lot of energy so they play extremely well in survival mode as you build up your gardens sun power with the persistent garden defense. The Survival Mode allows you to select through all the unique game play stages you've unlocked in Adventure Mode including battles during the day, night, in the backyard pool, in the fog and on the roof of the house. Each setting has a Hard derivative to really amp up the challenge and put your skills to the test.
Puzzles & Mini-Games
In the words of Arthur Schiff "but wait, there's more!" Popcap brings additional value to Plants vs. Zombies with Puzzle Mode and Mini-Games. You'll select from 20 mini-games, unlocking new games as you progress through the initial selection. The Mini-game option isn't unlocked until you win the feature partially through Adventure Mode but once you've unlocked it you'll be able to play through Begouled Twist, Big Trouble in Little Zombie, Whack a Zombie and other creative game titles. The games play much like their name suggests, with Begouled Twist being the most twisted version of Bejeweled Twist you've ever played, but following traditional Twist rules and ramping up difficult with zombie attacks.
You'll find 18 crazy puzzle adventures as well, many of which have you playing the role of the attacking Zombies; you'll battle the plant defenses to get yourself some brain action. Games like "I, Zombie" and "Dead Zeppelin" will have you strategically working to break the plant defenses to defeat the stage and chew on some pink brain matter, offering money and trophies as reward.
Money
While the game isn't money-focused, you'll find lawn upgrades are essential to working through some of the tougher modes of play. Once you've met "Crazy Dave" and his trunk full of insane lawn upgrades, you'll understand how money plays a fun role in Plants vs. Zombies. This includes buying additional weapon slots to make weapon selection less stressful, pool cleaners to help defend your pool during specific game levels, weapon upgrades like Cattails and Gloom Shrooms along with first aid for your wall-nut defenses.
Do you need Crazy Dave's shop upgrades? No. But you'll be yearning for them once you see all the potential in his trunk. You earn money throughout Adventure Mode as dropped coins land when taking out large number of undead. You will earn additional cash by playing through the mini-games and puzzles features. Once you've unlocked these additional modes, we urge you to play through as many mini-games and puzzles as you can to build bank and upgrade your lawn, thus making Adventure Mode a little easier.
Zombie Almanac
During Adventure Mode you'll find the infamous Zombie Almanac. This handy little book will explain the weaknesses to your undead combatants. How do you battle the Buckethead zombie? Can you stop Balloon Zombies? What does the Ladder Zombie do? It's all explained in the Almanac but... you must have battled the zombie in at least one stage to find its weak point in the almanac, so new zombie encounters will always be worrisome little affairs.The almanac will also explain the powers of your plants and proper usage for the green little objects. We suggest you read up so you have advantage in combat over the undead advancements.
Zen Garden
Yet another unlockable mode, the Zen Garden is a complete diversion from other game play modes. When you're stressed from zombie combat, you can head over into the Zen Garden and grow some plants. You'll have to water them, feed them and watch them grow. Much like a real garden, you'll find yourself investing some of your cash up front for rewards later down the line. These plants are demanding little buggers and you'll have to buy plant food, music players and other costly objects to keep your plants happy.
We found ourselves investing thousands of dollars in the Zen Garden all while asking ourselves, "why are we spending all our money in here when we need it for lawn upgrades?" Remember, it's all about initial investments for rewards in your future. As the plants become satisfied by your green thumb they'll reward you with small coins, most of which pale in comparison to the amount of money you've spent making them happy. However, as the plants grow larger they'll start offering gems as a reward... with $1,000 values. So, think on it and decide for yourself how far you want to take your Zen Garden.
There are four unique Zen garden settings for your plants to live in.
The Sound of Music
The game's music and sound effects fit the theme well. Of course, we've yet to find a Popcap title that doesn't excel at music and sounds by offering both cheery and dreary musical notes. Casual games lean heavily on all aspects of game play setting the mood for the action of play. There isn't anything missing from the title in terms of audio ear candy so we urge you to pump up the volume.Replay Value
In the event you've beat Adventure Mode, Survival Mode, completed all the puzzles and mini-games, you'll notice the typical Adventure Mode seems much more difficult. While the zombies breeds are easier in the beginning stages, they seem to come with more fervor and reckless abandon requiring much more speed and skill to hold them back. Even though you'll have all the weapons unlocked and usable, game play and challenge is ramped up much like "the second world" of The Legend of Zelda -- it's just harder.
A trophy on the main screen will let you know how many times you've defeated Adventure Mode, obviously Popcap knows there is addictive replay value in Plants vs. Zombies.
Overall
We're going to apologize to Popcap right now... we're sorry but this game blows away Peggle and thousand times over. While Peggle has moved in to be one of Popcap's flagship products along with Bejeweled Twist, we're burying it like a Digger Zombie as Plants vs. Zombies outshines the titles in so many ways. The Mini-Game sub-feature rivals a comlete product you may see on the Wii or DS and the puzzles offer a variety of creative game play alternatives while Adventure and Survival mode give this game legs well past three months of play value.Plants vs. Zombies is fun for the entire family -- the humor is above-and-beyond standard Popcap style and we've literally laughed out loud; wait until you see the music video. While our four-year old is a bit young to grasp the game play concepts, he's constantly asking us to play so he can watch. Our six-year old daughter assists us in selecting weapons and pointing out weakened defenses ("your wall-nut wall is crying!") and the household battles to see who can unlock all the mini-games and puzzles first.
Peggle and Bejeweled Twist are fun casual game titles, no doubt, but Plants vs. Zombies is a blast. It is by far the most comprehensive tower defense title on the market and offers more value than most casual games you'll play in 2009 and probably 2010. If our recommendation and flavor text isn't making an impression on you then let's just come out and say it bluntly: buy this game.
source: casualgamerchick.com
