Plants vs. Zombies

[Kris Johnson]

On the recommendation of a friend, I downloaded the demo for Plants vs. Zombies last night. It's a clever twist on the tower defense genre wherein zombies are assaulting your home and your only defense is to plant some very interesting vegetation on your lawn. This is Mad Botany at its finest: Peashooters do just what you'd expect, while the Wall-Nut provides a barrier through which the shambling undead must eat if they want to reach you. Your basic fuel is sunlight, which drops randomly from (where else?) the sky, but you can also plant Sunflowers to augment your supply.

The plants utilized for defense grow more varied (and, often, specialized) as the game progresses, as do the zombies. Naturally, you've got your slow shamblers, easily picked off by your Peashooters and Repeaters (essentially an upgraded Peashooter that fires multiple peas at once), but some zombies wear traffic cones or buckets on their noggins, making beheading them much more difficult, and some can pole vault over obstacles.

The demo on Steam allows for 60 minutes of play, which felt like about 25 (yes, it's one of those games) so I ponied up the ten bucks and next thing I knew five-plus hours of my evening (and early morning) had been completely devoured by Plants vs. Zombies.

[Chris Miller]

Oh, this looks like fun.

[Kris Johnson]

Oh, this looks like fun.

It's tons of fun! In addition to the standard tower defense missions, there are mini-games, puzzles, a survival mode and a Zen garden where you can cultivate the various botanical wonders without fear of zombie invasion. I've gone through the main game once and have completed most of the mini-games, puzzles and survival levels, but my Zen garden is barely getting started. Even after you've completed the Adventure mode (the main game), you can go back through it again with your "friend" Crazy Dave selecting some of your weapons for you (you have a limited number of "slots" into which you can load seeds before each round) to shake things up a bit.

[Kris Johnson]

I've completed all of the Mini-Games (twenty of them, including plant-and-zombie versions of Whack-A-Mole, bowling and Bejeweled) and my Zen Garden is...well, empty right now; I sold all of my plants so I could buy new seed varieties. But I do have a Tree of Wisdom and I also purchased an aquarium (for aquatic plants) and a...night-time thingy for 'shrooms. I still have a few Survival levels to complete, as well as a couple of Puzzles, and I'm working my way through the Adventure for the second time.

It's not a habit, it's cool, I feel alive.
If you don't have it you're on the other side.
I'm not an addict.
Maybe that's a lie.

[Nycteris]

I played the demo, but I am not quite sure if I want to buy this or not; I didn't finish Peggle yet.

But it's an excellent game!

[Kris Johnson]

Still. Playing.

Must. Kill. Zombies.

I'm about halfway through the Adventure the second time around and I'm expanding my Zen Garden. My Tree of Wisdom is about 70 feet tall (every foot past 50 costs $2500, but there's a Steam Achievement for growing the tree to 100 feet tall—must get Achievement!), my night and aquatic gardens are empty, but I've got about 16 plants in my day garden.

Two more Achievements I'm trying for: 10 flags in "I, Zombie" and 15 flags in "Vasebreaker". I've made it to 9 and 13 flags, respectively.

I think there's another Achievement for completing 20 flags in "Survival - Endless". My best is (naturally) 19 flags. Grr.