Plants vs. Zombies Review (PS3)

     I guess Plants vs. Zombies is mainly a phone/tablet game... I'm kind of out of touch with those devices. But when I played the demo of the PS3 version, I was sold.

     Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game that has you defending your house from brain-starved zombie hordes with an unlikely ally; sentient plant life. The graphics are cute and cartoony and consist of brilliant HD sprites. If you're a fan of HD sprites, you won't be disappointed as this game is packed full of great ones. There are 49 plants in the game, and each one is a silly, happy (or angry) little guy with great attack and idle animations. These range from pea pods that shoot out peas like a cannon and watermelon plants that launch like a catapult to sunflowers that produce extra sunlight (which you spend to plant more seeds) and walnuts that block the zombies' path. Each plant has a little text blurb to accompany it in the game's almanac, and these are generally clever and cute as well. With almost all of the plants, there is a great sense of visual design. If you're a fan of urban vinyl toys, you'll like what's in here; the plants have a very Yummy vibe to them. Ditto for the 26 zombie types and the great looking environments.

     There are many game modes, so I'll start with the campaign and work my way out from there. The campaign presents 5 overarching levels that consist of 10 stages each. At the beginning of each stage, you are shown what types of zombies you will be facing and then you choose what plants you are going to take with you into the level. Typically you will be facing certain specialized zombies and will need to take certain plants that can counteract them. For example, if you are facing zombies that use makeshift shields, you would take mushrooms that shoot out armor-piercing gas. If you are facing zombies on Zambonies, you would take thorns that pop their tires. If you are facing zombies that jump, you might take big walnuts to block their jumps. When the level starts, you have a few seconds of peace before the zombies start marching toward your house, which is on the left side of the screen. Zombies start all the way on the right side of the screen and march toward the house in one of 6 horizontal lanes. If a zombie reaches the house, a lawnmower will run over and instantly kill all of the zombies in that lane. This is a one-time occurrence. Once a lane's lawnmower is gone and another zombie reaches the house, they go inside and kill you, and it's game over.          Each lane has 9 spots to plant your defenses. Each plant costs a certain amount of sunlight. You collect sunlight as it drops out of the sky from time to time by running your cursor (controlled by the left stick) over it. You can also set down plants that generate sunlight for you (this is a requirement to beat almost any level).

The plants you have chosen for a level are displayed at the top of the screen. You use R1 and L1 to select which plant you want, and then use the analog stick to move the cursor to where you want to plant it and press x to plant. Holding down circle digs up a plant if you want to remove it from a spot to plant something else. Once you plant...a plant, it has a cooldown time before you can plant it again. Some plants recharge quickly and can be rapidly planted all over while others take a long time to recharge. Whenever a plant is in range of a zombie, it will attack it automatically. Most plants only attack zombies that are in the same row as them, although there are some exceptions. A progress bar at the bottom of the screen shows you how far into the level you are and when big groups of zombies are coming up. If you survive until the end of the progress bar, you clear the stage. Most levels last 5-10 minutes. That's basically it, but from this simple idea comes a huge amount of variety.

     Almost every level you beat earns you something new. Often it's a new plant or a new zombie type that will attack you in the next level. Each overarching world in the game offers a twist on the pattern as well. The backyard has a pool that gets attacked by aquatic zombies and requires aquatic plants to defend it. Night time levels don't produce sunlight but give you access to cheaper mushrooms that behave differently than day time plants. Fog levels obscure your vision of big chunks of the yard, and rooftop levels require you to place pots for your plants and make you use indirect firing plants due to the slant of the roof.

     Every fifth level in the campaign is a special level that plays differently. Usually it involves playing without sunlight using plants you can plant for free but are only provided to you one at a time, forcing you to work with what you are given. There are a few other variations too. These levels are very fun and work well to break up the other levels. Playing a few normal levels in a row can feel a bit samey, so having something different to break up the pacing is a great idea. One of these levels is a brilliant thunderstorm level that is really atmospheric and fun.

     The campaign is a bit on the easy side, with a few challenging bits here or there, and is a bit long for being so easy, but it is also pretty engaging and fun. The way the game gives you new plants, enemies, and scenarios is really well paced, but I don't recommend playing the campaign for hours on end as it can get a little boring since most levels play out very similarly (albeit with new plants and enemies and stuff). Once you find how you like to build your defenses, you end up doing that every level, with some experimentation and changing as you gain new plants. Still, you usually end up building similar defenses every level with changes here and there.

     So, let's talk about the other modes. Once beaten, you can play the campaign over again. The second time through there are more big waves of zombies and three plants are chosen automatically for you, limiting your choices a bit and making you use certain plants. There are vs. and co-op modes, which I didn't try. There is puzzle mode, which has 18 levels of 2 different flavors. In one, you play as the zombies and try to defeat the plants, and in the other, the level is filled with vases you crack open to reveal either a zombie or a plant. These vasebreaker levels are very fun. Mini-game mode has 20 levels that have interesting rules, like super-fast zombies, zombies with plant heads that attack you, and a fun mode that put's you up against great odds but lets you plant whole columns of plants at a time. There are lot's of fun levels here, but some are meh. Then there is survival mode, which has 10 levels that want you to survive a certain number of waves of zombies. Beating this mode unlocks endless survival mode, which goes on forever. This mode is far and away the hardest mode in the game. There is a trophy for reaching wave 40, and it is a very challenging task. I made several attempts at this, including a 2 hour try that got me to wave 38, and finally a successful 3 hour run that got me to level 51. A few rounds in, this mode becomes unrelenting, throwing huge amounts of the game's toughest zombies at you. The difficulty spikes sharply, and only really powerful builds will survive long. I found a picture of a build that I ended up using that got me to wave51. The only thing they don't really note in that picture is that I used tons of spikerocks to stall the gargantuans, who will attack them for awhile, and to stop Zomboni's and catapults. The build in this picture might seem over-the-top, but other ideas I tried on my own fell apart hilariously once the going got tought You need to babysit this build constantly with bombs and ice-shrooms, but it will get you there. This mode is a fun way to end your time with the game, as it's difficulty is way above anything else you'll encounter.

     The game has slowdown when there are a lot of plants and zombies onscreen at once. In the campaign, you almost feel proud if you can get enough plants onscreen at once to cause some slowdown (just like I used to love crashing my PSP when I pulled off a ridiculous combo in Puzzle Quest). However in endless mode, which often pushes 100+ characters on-screen at once, the game slows to a crawl. Part of the reason it takes 2-3 hours to get to round 40 is that the whole thing is viewed in slow motion. This kind of helps you, as endless mode is incredibly frenetic and things can go wrong really fast, but it's also annoying to deal with extremely significant slowdown. If it get's real bad, the music will also glitch and switch songs or sometimes play 2 songs at once, which sounds horrible.

     There is also a gardening mode in the game where you take care of plants by watering them and giving them plant food and stuff. You can grow them bigger and sell them for lots of money (which you use to buy upgrades that let you take more plants into a level, or special plants that are better versions of the standard ones you earn by beating levels). I spent a lot of time with this mode. It scratches the virtual pet itch quite well, if you miss your Tamagotchi (I do!).

    The music in this game is really good. It's catchy and sounds like an organ to me. The rooftop music is especially sublime. Also, the trophy you get for only using walnuts and chompers is really fun (sorry, didn't know where else to put this in the review!).

     Plants vs. Zombies has a massive amount of content. While the campaign can get a little boring, the other modes mix things up enough to keep you interested. The great character design is a delight to look at, and the gameplay is generally satisfying. There are a great number of ways to logically designing your defenses, with many possible successful builds in most modes. Plants vs. Zombies is a Great Game, Tier 3.