Overview
Plants Vs Zombies is a cheap, humorous tower defence game.  It looks simple but does have some depth and replayability and is a great way to waste lots of time!

Review
Plants Vs Zombis (PvZ) is a tower defence game - if you're not familiar with the Genre I suggest reading my other articles on this subject like this one:

http://www.xomba.com/tower_defence_games

PvZ is played horisontally:

You place your plants on the left and the Zombies come in from the right and try to eat them, it's that simple.  You can have plants to earn you Sun (used to buy plants in each individual level) plants to earn you coins (used at the shop to buy plant Cards and plant add ons and later to manage your Zen Garden).  Plants which are temporary (kill zombies in a row, kill one zombie, etc) and permenant offensive plants of various types.

Management of the plants you chose to use on a particular level is also important - you only have a limited number and if you don't chose something you need you'll be stuffed!

I really enjoyed this game but I found it a little bit easy to complete each level - I believe I completed the whole story mode and lost maybe twice the whole time but that doesn't stop it being fun - it's really cool finding out what your new plant cards do and earning enough money to increase your collection of cards and improve your ability to beat the game.

In terms of replayability this game scores big - there's the main adventure mode, mini games, challenges and survival levels - in addition if you play the adventure again it changes in various ways (eg:some of your cards are chosen automatically).  You may get bored with the whole thing or you may play on until you have a fully complete Zen garden but you can't complain about the opportunities the game gives you to just keep playing it.

I like quite a few PopCap games, peggle anyone?, and this one is no exception.  It's fun and there's a whole lot more to it than you first think.  But like all PopCap games if you want something to strain the capacity of your computer and graphics card, this is NOT what you're looking for.

PvZ is available direct from popcap for $29.99 and pops up discounted periodically.  At this price if you're looking for a TD game to kill time with it's a good buy.  However there are a lot of free options out there so make sure you've played them out first!

Rating: B

Good

- Initially simple but subsequently complex gameplay choices.

- Entertaining Plot with silly characters

- Cheap!

- Easy to get into.

Bad

- Too Easy

- Graphically Simple

Supported Machines
Should run fine on anything less than 10 years old!  Runs under XP and Vista no problems.

Mr Staypuft
Old School Gamer

My Xomba Articles:
http://www.xomba.com/user/slewis68au