Game review: Plants vs Zombies - iPhone / iPod Touch

Or at least that’s what I thought until Plants vs Zombies came along.

This crazy and colourful tower defence game is like a drug. Once you have your first hit it’s impossible not to get hooked.

I picked the game up from the App Store at abut 9pm and enthusiastically loaded it up on my iPod Touch with high expectations given the quality of previous PopCap games such as Bejeweled 2, Chuzzle and Peggle.

Even with my love of those other games I didn’t think Plants vs Zombies would kill more than an hour or so while I played it for the first time.

Six hours later I finally prised myself out of the armchair – worn out, bleary eyed and with stiff knees from sitting down for too long.

Oh PopCap, why must you keep releasing these painfully addictive games which wipe out valuable hours of my life and deprive me of sleep?

Aside from addictiveness, the other thing all PopCap games have in common is their simplicity.

Bejeweled 2 for example is just about making sets of three gems. Peggle is just hitting pegs will little balls. Bookworm is only tapping letters to form words. The beauty of these games is in their design and also that maddening must-have-one-more-go ingredient which PopCap drops into all its releases.

And it’s exactly the same with Plants vs Zombies – a simple concept, delightfully executed.

The premise of the game is that your house in under attack from waves of brain-hungry zombies.

To repel them you must grow some very special plants such as peashooters, wall-nuts and various types of shrooms which blast, block, slow, eat and explode the undead invaders.

In the adventure mode there is a gradually unlocked array of 49 plants at your disposal. It’s just as well because there are 26 different types of zombie, each with its own skills, who want to feast on you.

If a zombie sauntering in from the right of the screen gets too close to a plant it will gobble up your flora and continue on its quest to reach your front door on the left.

You’ve probably gathered by now this is a rather silly game, but that doesn’t stop some deep strategy being required to conquer the levels.

At the heart of the game is deciding which plants to grow and where to place them on the grid for maximum effect.

The challenges take place at day, at night, in fog, on an open lawn, in a swimming pool and on the roof – each environment and weather condition requiring its own strategy for success.

The in-game currency, sunshine, also provides a tactical twist. On daytime levels little suns appear on the screen, which when tapped on generate extra credit that is used to purchase additional plants.

On night levels there are no suns so you must plant sunflowers or sun-shrooms which produce their own sunshine.

On completion of each level a new type of plant or other gizmo for your garden in unlocked but there is a limit on how many varieties of plant you can take into the next challenge. Choosing the right selection of plants for each level is vital. Get it wrong and the zombies will have a field day.

As well as the standard defend-your-home-at-all-costs levels among the 50 challenges in adventure mode there are also several fun mini games woven in, including bowling and whack-a-zombie.

Completing adventure mode unlocks quick play, in which individual levels can be replayed.

The pace of the game gets very fast when you are frantically placing plants to destroy the increasing number of attackers but it never gets frustrating or overwhelming. PopCap never make games designed to trip players up – all their games are accessible and welcoming, though that doesn’t make them easy to beat.

In keeping with the game’s wacky theme, Plants vs Zombies is laced with oddball humour.

The plant and zombie animations are brimming with personality.

As menacing as they are supposed to be, the plants are all very cute.

The zombies are very much at the cartoon end of the scale. From the zombies with traffic cones or buckets on their heads to those using screen doors and newspapers for shields, there is a lot to chuckle at in this game.

Great music and sound effects complement the presentation nicely.

Plants vs Zombies was a massive hit when the PC version was released last year. I never played the game on PC so I’ve come to the iPhone/iPod version completely fresh with no preconceptions.

An excellent job has been made of putting the game on to Apple’s mobile devices. The screen layout and touch controls are first-class. Pretty much everything in the game looks good and works well.

Some people have complained this version is lacking some additional modes which were in the PC original. People need to remember this version costs a fraction of the price and the game has been adapted for the iPhone and iPod Touch – it was never meant to be exactly the same.

Obviously not having played the PC version I don’t miss any of the extra modes – I just think this is a fantastic tower defence game to have on my iPod.

The only slight issue I’ve discovered is a frame rate slowdown which usually occurs towards the end of levels when the screen is full with plants and zombies. I’ve usually been concentrating too much on plant placement to really notice it, and it certainly hasn’t affected my overall enjoyment of the game.

Given the way Plants vs Zombies has rocketed to the upper reaches of the App Store charts already, it obviously appeals to a wide audience. It looks all set to repeat the success it’s had on PC – success which will be richly deserved. Another classic from PopCap.

Verdict: 9 out of 10 – My new favourite tower defence game. Play this at your peril as these pesky zombies have the power to swallow up hours of your life.

Watch the Plants vs Zombies trailer: