Not your grandmother’s tower defense…but maybe her azaleas.
A fresh and fun new take on tower defense that has you wondering if you really wanted to see a plant eat a zombie.
What makes Pop Cap Game’ Plants vs. Zombies so unique? Well, other than the fact that there are plants fighting against a mob of zombies, quite a bit. The game delivers a new take on tower defense that has added layers of strategy that will have you wanting more.
Tower defense games are a dime a dozen in this day and age; each with its own way of attempting to be unique. Traditionally, in tower defense games, the enemies would start at point a and travel to point b by following a set path. You, as the defender, would set up some form of defense along that pathway and every enemy would be subjected to the towers. PvZ changes up that formula by changing the path that the enemies follow. Instead of the a to b path strategy, PvZ has six lanes that go from left to right. The Zombies begin on the right and attempt to invade your house on the left. You must strategically plant your plants, one at a time, in the lane that you see fit. But, like with anything in life, flowers are not free. Each flower costs a certain amount of “Sunshine” and a delay between uses. These two aspects is what makes you strategically plan your moves as opposed to planting carelessly. Since plants can only attack zombies in their lanes, with the exception of a few higher level flowers, a hasty planted defender plant will be useless in a lane with no zombies and your house becomes an easy target for the walking dead. There are two ways of earning sunshine in the game, either from it falling from the sky every so often (where else would it come from?) or from sunflowers (go figure.) The more sunflowers you have the more sunshine you can harvest and the more plants you can plant or you can plant more effective plants. The other bit of strategy that PvZ banks on is that your land itself is divided into 45 individual squares where one plant occupies one square. You must use your wits to balance the number of sunshine producers and defenders. It sounds more complicated that it actually is.
Your land is a precious, limited, resource and with the right balance of defending and attacking plants, victory is easily attainable. PvZ has an almanac of different plants from pea shooters who shoot a single pea down its lane to a plant that harkens to a look-a-like Audrey II from the Little Shop of Horrors movie. There are “wall” nuts that act as walls and cherry bombs that also do what their name implies. The sheer variety of plants allows for a number of ways to play and still be successful on any level. But even the zombies have a few tricks up their sleeps, or lack their of. In PvZ you can expect anything from zombie football players to zombie zamboni drivers who can ice over a complete lane rendering it useless. Each zombie and plant are well drawn and look almost as if they came out of a 2d platformer. They are all easily identifiable on the field which allows you to properly react to the invasion appropriately. There is no shortage of strategies that you can apply since every level will have you dealing with something totally different from the last.
The game offers up five different stages each with 10 levels each. The first stage has you learning the basics on your typical front lawn with nothing really special. The second stage has you doing something completely different by defending your place at night ( that means you don’t have access to sunshine.) You do, however, get access to a breed of plant who doesn’t need any sunshine to grow. This was what really surprised me about PvZ. They were able to take a simple idea but still provide a very engaging experience every level of the way. No two levels feel the same and you will rarely ever do the same thing twice to win. You really have to understand what each plant does and how they can work together rather than individually to win.
Not every level goes the same way either. Some levels do not require you to harvest sunshine but rather have a conveyor belt at the top of the screen with random cards that come down that you can plant anywhere on the field without paying its costs. It really does feel that the developers wanted the player to experience something new on every level and apply difficulty in ways beyond simply adding more zombies. That level of care really does show and this is a great example of why PvZ shines as a tower defense game.
Beyond the game, there are minigames that are unlocked as you play the main story mode and range from a slot machine type game to a game based on the popular bejeweled called “begouled.” The other, more unique, game is one called Zen garden. This is essentially a plant nursery where you are rewarded coins based on how well your plants are taken care of; neither tower nor defense. PvZ will have you replaying previous levels to earn coins that unlock better plants for your arsenal or more valuable plants for your Zen garden. These extra options are a welcomed change of pace from the story more and have much to offer in terms of replay-ability.
There is definitely nothing like it out there, in terms of personality and entertainment value. PvZ has something for everyone from the hardcore strategist to the casual botanist. There is a lot of replay value and it is definitely one of the best tower defense games out there. Anyone who wants a change of the ordinary will not be disappointed with this one.
Rating: -A
Ricardo R.
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