Plants vs. Zombies
About the Game
Zombies belongs to the "tower defense" sub-genre of casual games, where the objective is to deploy a series of stationary weapons to protect a structure against hordes of enemies. Plants provide the artillery and can be bought with sun power, the game's currency. The enemies are zombies invading a suburban lawn. At the start of each level, players starts to plant the available seeds on the lawn in a strategic manner.
Gameplay & Core Systems
Peashooters are the basic variety, spitting a projectile forwards every few seconds. Variations appear later in the game, shooting several peas at the same time and freezing the enemies, making them move slower. Plants can be removed with the shovel to make space for new ones. There are twenty of them, and most are parodies of well-known casual titles: ZomBotany (1 and 2), Wall-nut Bowling (1 and 2), Slot Machine, It's Raining Seeds, Beghouled, Invisi-ghoul, Seeing Stars, Zombiquarium, Beghouled Twist, Big Trouble Little Zombie, Portal Combat, Column Like You See 'Em, Bobsled Bonanza, Zombie Nimble Zombie Quick, Whack a Zombie, Last Stand, Pogo Party, and Dr. The game has three gameplay modes.
Standout Features
- Zombies belongs to the "tower defense" sub-genre of casual games, where the objective is to deploy a series of stationary weapons to protect a structure against hordes of enemies.
- Plants provide the artillery and can be bought with sun power, the game's currency.
- Zombies slowly begin to appear from the street at the right side, just a few initially, and must be destroyed before they can reach the house on the other side.
- The sunflower can be planted to generate extra units of sun power but doesn't have any attack power against the invading undead.
- Plants can be removed with the shovel to make space for new ones.
- In the main adventure mode, levels get progressively more difficult, and at the end of each one, players receives a new plant for the arsenal.
- After each turn, players can choose plants from the arsenal.
- There are three types of survival: normal (one wave per turn, 5 turns) on each of the five maps, hard (two waves per turn, 5 turns) on each of the five maps, and endless (two waves per turn, endless amount of turns) on the pool map.
Modes & Ways to Play
The game has three gameplay modes. In the main adventure mode, levels get progressively more difficult, and at the end of each one, players receives a new plant for the arsenal. Puzzle mode has two variations: "Vasebreaker", where the goal is to break the vases scattered on the lawn, to uncover plants or zombies and use the former to fight the latter, and "I, Zombie", where players controls the zombies against the plants. In survival mode, the zombies attack in turns.
Player support includes Internet, Same/Split-Screen, Co-Op, and Free-for-all / One-on-one (VS).
Presentation & Atmosphere
The Zen Garden stores all the available plants, where they have to be tended, watered, fertilized, sprayed for bugs, and listen to music.
Display support includes Progressive Scan (480p), HDTV 720p, HDTV 1080i, and HDTV 1080p.
