[Review] Masterful Plants vs. Zombies Proves

[Love Pulse]

Blending the classic image of the rotting, ambulatory dead with adorably irreverent humor, Plants vs. Zombies is a textbook example of how to hook a wide swath of gamers with easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master gameplay.

One part chess, one part "tower defense" and one part World of Warcraft,* *the latest creative stunner from PopCap Games is an addictive whole that's much more than the sum of its parts. Corpses are rising from their graves, and your army of militant plants is the only line of defense between the unholy mob and the delicious brains to be found inside your suburban home. Peashooters fire deadly legumes. Cherry bombs explode. You get the idea.

Plants vs. Zombies, released Tuesday for PC and Mac, is the brainchild of George Fan, a game designer working out of his bedroom. In an industry driven by blockbuster franchises and derivative clones, its addictive gameplay and clever design offer a glimpse of an alternate side of the gaming industry, where creations are labors of love.*
*

It is a very funny game. You’d think that slaying hundreds of reanimated bodies would be somber or terrifying, but every level of the game offers something to laugh about, like hilarious commentary from the game’s eccentric cast: During one level, the zombies themselves send you a crudely scrawled note offering a "midnight znack" of "ice cream and brains."

The gameplay is similar to most tower defense strategy games: It's all about properly placing your defensive arsenal in such a way as to optimally repel each wave of invaders.

But Fan, formerly of Warcraft maker Blizzard Entertainment, gave his creation a personable twist. "Everyone built a fort as kids," Fan says. "I wanted to do a defense-oriented game, but I thought that towers were too static. They have no personality. So I came up with plants. You can give plants tons of personality, but you don't expect them to move.”

The huge variety of both plants and zombies keeps things interesting. From the Thriller-era Michael Jackson lookalike zombie who summons a horde of dancing attackers to the almost annoyingly cheery sunflowers, both your enemies and your allies are as entertaining as their abilities are varied.

Early levels see you defending a simple grid from a small horde that slowly trudges straight ahead using plants that fire single pellets, but each successive level adds a new twist. Eventually, you’ll be facing aquatic zombies riding undead dolphins and an entire undead bobsled team, utilizing weapons like a Gatling gun-esque pea plant, potato land mines and nuclear mushrooms.

In all, the game includes 40 varieties of deadly plants versus 25 separate breeds of zombie.

It's just the sort of hyper-addictive game that you'd expect from indie publisher PopCap, whose other smash hits include Peggle and Bejeweled. And it's so crazy that it could only have come from a small developer with a strong creative vision untainted by big corporate strategy.

Small developer doesn't mean short game, however. Between the Adventure mode's 50 levels, the unending Survival mode, the 20 wildly varied mini-games, the relaxing Zen Garden and the game's Puzzle mode, you could be playing Plants vs. Zombies for a long time.

You could also kill a few hours reading the hilarious Almanac entries for each of the zombies and plants.

It's a challenging game, too. I’ve logged enough hours in strategy games to qualify as an officer in certain South American militaries, but the last few levels of Adventure mode and many of those Puzzle mode levels require intense concentration and genuine skill.

Given how well Fan's vision for Plants vs. Zombies turned out, I hope that PopCap’s willingness to treat its designers as artists instead of simply franchise-creation tools catches on with some of the gaming industry’s bigger players.