First released in 2009, Plants Vs Zombies is an iconic tower defence video game created by PopCap Games that is clearly a labour of love. Above all that, it stimulates the emotional mind and intuition from start to finish, giving you the kind of spontaneous quick-fire stimulation that you would want to see in a quick Strategy game.

Storyline

As a classic tower defence video game, Plants Vs. Zombies Are based on Your ability to defend your character’s territories or possessions by obstructing the attackers or stopping them from reaching certain levels. This is usually interpreted as building several kinds of structures or obstacles that automatically block, slow down, attack, or kill enemies. 

 This game translates to you as a homeowner caught smack in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Your everyday itinerary consists of you constantly fighting off one hoard of zombies or the other. As a horde of zombies approaches your house from various angles along several parallel lanes, your role as the homeowner is to defend your home and property by setting up plants to deter them.

The plants deter the zombies by killing them by launching projectiles at the zombies or negatively affecting them and impeding their destructive march towards you. You can also get more plants by collecting a certain currency called “sun,” which allows you to buy plants. 

How to Play the Game

At the beginning of each level of the game, you can pick a limited number of types of plants with seed packets. To be able to place the plants you have chosen, you must pay using the plenty currency “sun.” Your lawn is divided into a grid in which your house is located on the left side of the Grid. As the zombies crawl and stomp their way into your yard, you place different types of plants in the individual squares of the Grid, keeping the zombies away from you and your house.

Depending on the type of plants you place in the grid’s squares, you could either shoot, blow up, or block your attacking zombies. Also, there are different types of zombies as well, meaning the plants have different effects on them, and they have different weaknesses and special behavioural patterns. An example would be the Dancing zombie that summons Backup Dancers around himself to protect himself. Another zombie type is the Dolphin Rider Zombie, who mounts a dolphin to hop over a plant. Balloon Zombies can simply float over your plants and carry on with attacking your house.

To get more plants to cater to these different kinds of zombies attacking your home grid, you can “sun” by either clicking on the sun that randomly generates over the lawn or by using certain plants that actually generate sun. These kinds of flowers include Sunflowers and Sunrooms. Your plants are not everlasting as they can get worn out. Each kind of plant has a varying recharge time as well as varying recharge speeds. Should you need to remove a certain plant from your grid, you can dig it up using a shovel. If you fail at keeping the zombies within the grid and a zombie manages to reach the left edge of a lane, its Lawnmower will kill all the zombies in that lane. The lawnmower will then be depleted after that one use. Should another zombie succeed and reach the end of that lane, the level will be failed and you will be forced to restart the level.

Game Modes Available In Plants Vs Zombies

One of my favourite modes while playing this game was the adventure mode. This comes with five stages, each of which poses ten levels. After you conquer every level, you can collect a new plant to use in the coming levels. After reaching the first level of the second stage, zombies start leaving in-game money behind when You kill them. You can later spend this money at an in-game store called Crazy Dave’s boosts that you can use to upgrade your already-placed plants and your gardening tools.

At the end of the Adventure mode, your character gets to face off against the ultimate enemy, the evil scientist Dr Zomboss who is also the zombies’ animator. Zomboss is obviously more powerful than the regular zombies and can crush the plants using his zombie. He can also throw ice and fire balls across your lawn. Your only defence against these are Jalapenos and Ice Shrooms. 

The other modes only become available to you after you have completed the Adventure mode. These are the Mini-Games mode, the Puzzle mode, and the Survival mode. In the Mini-Games mode, you can select from a collection of twenty mini-games, each of which poses various levels with different unique challenges. 

In the puzzle mode, you get to choose between two types of levels: “Vasebreaker” and “I, Zombie.” The former allows you to break open a set of vases that either contains a plant or a zombie. You can only get to the end of the level if all the vases are smashed and you have killed all the zombies. In I, Zombie, you can place the zombies to race towards the end of the lane past cardboard cut-outs of plants.

For survival mode, you are required to choose plants to decrease increasingly challenging hordes of zombies from a selection of levels. 

Final Verdict

This game is just about as cool as you can get from a game of its calibre and cartoonish tendencies. It easily chronicles what casual gaming should be about. You find yourself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse with Zombies relentlessly invading your home. Your only chance of survival lies with your arsenal of plants like peashooters and cherry bombs!

Despite being a little cartoonish, the graphics were great. I enjoyed that I had to think as fast as I could, plant as fast as I could, and keep my eye on everything to make sure that you keep the dozens of types of zombies as far away as possible. I also appreciated that the game was not bland or set in its plots as there were added Obstacles, including a setting sun, creeping fog, and even a swimming pool. The fun never dies!