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It’s time for another installment of Palm Discovery’s wReview Wednesday!

Plants vs. Zombies for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Okay, I know that I recently did a review of Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, but this version for the PC is a bit different as it offers a lot of features, bonus games and enhancements that the iPhone version doesn’t. So, here it is.

It’s been known as the most popular PopCap Games title since its debut back on May 5th of 2009 selling over 300,000 copies in just the first nine days it was available on the Apples iTunes App Store. Plus, it won nominations of “Casual Game of the Year” and “Outstanding Achievement in Game Design” for Interactive Achievement Awards by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) plus numerous other distinctions. No doubt, most of you already know it as the scary, fun and addictive game called Plants vs. Zombies. Who would have even thought of mixing the idea of two totally differing concepts of plants and zombies together? Well, the game designer, George Fan did. And what a phenomenon it turned out to be!

Plants vs. Zombies is quite a unique game that combines both elements of puzzle and strategy together in such a way that makes sense. You’re set in a typical normal and quiet neighborhood with a nice looking house with a swimming pool in the backyard, well perhaps TOO quiet. To your astonishment, fear and shock, you find out that the reason why it’s so quiet is because you’re overlooking a cemetery. Plus, you find out that zombies are coming out of their graves and coming to YOUR house to eat your brains! Oh my God!

Thankfully, you have some help on your side. You have Crazy Dave, your next door neighbor who gives you some help and pointer on how to defeat those zombies and even sell you some weapons you might need. Why is he called, Crazy Dave? Because he’s CCRRR-R-AA-AA-ZZZZ-YYY! That’s why. Plus, you have an arsenal of weapons against those brain-eating zombies in those plants you have on your lawn. What?!!! Who would have thought that Sunflowers are so essential against zombies? And peashooters, and mushrooms and many more which you’ll find and unlock with each stage or level you complete or pass.

The object of the game is to collect enough sunlight for you to buy and plant your army of plants or weapons to prevent the invasion of the zombies who want to eat your brains. Simple enough? Well, wait until you actually play to game and you’ll find out how simple it is to do that. The game progresses from the front yard to the back yard and then finally to the roof. If you can stop the zombies until the end, you are one expert zombie killer. LOL!

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For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

As mentioned, the object of the game is to build up your army of weapons and plants to stop the zombies from coming into your house. You first start off in the daytime on your front lawn. You’re provided with 100 sunlight points in which you can buy a peashooter and plant it on your lawn. In this first stage/level 1-1, there’s only a horizontal strip or row of lawn in which the zombies can walk on to get to your house. For level 1-1, you can only plant your peashooter on that one strip of lawn. For level 1-2, you’ll have 3 strips of lawn and then all 5 strips. With each row or strip of lawn having 9 squares or areas where you can potentially plant, you have a maximum of 45 plants planted. But, in the later stages, some of these squares will be taken up by a grave so you’ll have to be careful and strategize your moves. Thankfully, there’s also a last resort in your arsenal to fend off the zombies, in the form of a lawn mower that will mow down the zombies in its path. However, that is a last ditch effort and once used, there is nothing else to stop the zombies from going into your home.

During the course of the “day”, you’ll find sunlight falling from the sky. Sunlight is very important as you will need it to buy and plant your army of plants on your front lawn. Collect the sunlight that falls on the lawn before it disappears to collect your sunlight. If you stop the zombies from getting into the house on the first stage/level, you’ll unlock a Sunflower which will help you get sunlight faster. After that, you’ll unlock the cherry bomb which will explode to destroy all zombies nearby. With each level you complete, you’ll unlock more plants or weapons. But that also means that the zombies are also going to more dangerous. You’ll discover zombies with a road cone on his head, a zombie with a tin pail over
his head, a Dancing disco zombie and even the Gargantuan, a large-sized zombie that stomps all plants in his path and carries a mini zombie on his back. Needless to say, you’ll have lots on your plate ;). Oops. Sorry.

The game is comprised of various different levels or stages. The first one is on the front lawn and in the daytime. The next one is still on the front lawn but at night, which is a totally different thing. After that, you move to the backyard in the day time and then at night. Then you progress up to the roof in the daytime and finally at night. With the roof, unless you’ve accumulated enough coins during the game, you won’t be able to buy a roof cleaner, which is similar to the lawnmower in that it will be your last ditch effort to fend off the zombies. During the course of the game, at various stages, you’ll unlock special games that you can play to accumulate more coins. You can choose to play either the Adventure game or the other unlocked games in the Quick Play, or Puzzle, depending on which games you’ve unlocked. Once the last stage on the roof at night is completed, you’ll be able to unlock the Survival games, which is like a mini version of the different stages, except there’s 5 waves of zombies in each, thus, the survival title.

As mentioned already, besides the main Adventure game, there is also the Mini-Games, the Puzzle and Survival games. However, they are locked until you reach a certain point or stage in the Adventure game. Once unlocked, it may be a strategic move to play those bonus games to collect more coins as you can buy better weapons for use in the Adventure game later.

The Mini-Games offer up to 20 different games of varying gameplay. Each unlocked upon completion of another one in this Mini-Games group. There’s Zombotany, which is similar to the front lawn daytime game except the zombies have a peashooter or wall-nut head which helps them defeat you; Wall-nut bowling in which you roll or bowl the wall-nuts to knock the zombies off like bowling pins; Slot Machine, in which you play the slots and win your sunlight or plants to fight off the zombies; It’s Raining Seeds in which the seeds are rained down in a foggy nightand you have to figure out the best way to fend off the zombies with your limited resources and much more.

The Puzzle games offer 10 different games of Vasebreaker in which you break vases to uncover either your plants or weapons or zombies. Don’t break the vases too quickly or you may uncover too many zombies that may overwhelm your defences. There’s also 10 different games of Zombie, in which the roles are reversed. You are the zombie and want to get to the end of the 5 rows to eat the brains. Of course, you’ll have to figure out a way to get to it with all the peashooters, magnet-shrooms and Squashes.

The Survival games as mentioned, are simply a more intense and condensed version of the various stages of the game: front lawn daytime, front lawn nighttime, backyard daytime, backyard nighttime, roof daytime and so on. But it’s called the Survival games because you have to deal with 5 waves of zombies! Good luck!

Besides these games, there’s also something called the Zen Garden. It’s basically a place where you plant flowers and other plants and take care of it in order to get some coins. It’s like those care for your pet type of game. The plants will tell you it needs water, fertilizer, music or whatever in order to stay happy. It’s a cute and different way of playing the game without the stress of zombies.

You’ll also unlock the the Crazy Dave’s shop where you can buy a variety of different weapons for your Adventures or stuff for your Zen Garden. Plus, you can unlock the Almanac which can provide you with important and helpful information on all the plants and zombies you’ve unlocked or encountered, to help you find the strengths and weaknesses of each. As if all these extras aren’t enough, there’s also the Zombatar! This extra feature of the game allows you to create the look of the zombie that carries the flag begins the zombie wave you encounter at each level! Very cool! And finally, non PopCap Game is complete without some kind of trophy feature. In this game, it’s called Achievements and you’ll find all those achievements you’ve been awarded during the stages.

More details of Plants vs. Zombies for PC (taken from PopCap Games website)

Music video of Plants vs. Zombies (courtesy of PopCap Games from Youtube)

Get ready to soil your plants! Again! PopCap’s fun-dead game of the year is updated and expanded with 20 new achievements and the interactive Zombatar™. Make your very own zombie, then watch it come to “life” in your game! Stop 26 types of zombies dead in their tracks with your arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants! Battle through 50 Adventure levels, 20 Mini-Games, plus Puzzle and Survival modes. Or dig into the zombie-free Zen Garden. The fun never dies!

Check out the great iPhone games from PopCap:

BEJEWELED® 2 – Match sparkling gems in the world’s #1 puzzle game.

PLANTS vs. ZOMBIES™ – Soil your plants in this award-winning action/strategy game.

CHUZZLE™ – Slide and match cute, cuddly — and surprisingly explosive — furballs.

PEGGLE™ – Clear the orange pegs in this epic blend of luck and skill.

Bookworm for iPhone and iPod Touch

More About the Game

Five game modes: Adventure, Mini-Games, Puzzle, Survival and Zen Garden
Battle zombies through day, night, fog, in a swimming pool and on the rooftop
Earn 20 Achievements and show off your zombie-zapping skills
Make your own fun-dead friends with the Zombatar™!

System Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.4.11 and later
Memory (RAM): 512 MB RAM
Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.66 GHz
DirectX Version: 8.0
Internet: Internet connection is required to register both the download& and back-up CD-ROM versions of the game

Windows XP/Vista/7
Memory (RAM): 512+ MB RAM
Processor: 1.2+GHz MHz or faster
DirectX Version: 8.0
Internet: Internet connection is required to register both the download& and back-up CD-ROM versions of the game

Slideshow of Plants vs. Zombies for the PC

Video of Plants vs. Zombies for the PC

Video review of Plants vs. Zombies for the PC

Here are my observations:

I Liked:

Easy and simple to play

The game is very easy to play. You’re tapping on items to select. You tap on the area you want to put the items on. It’s that simple. I love games that are fun to play without having too many things or moves to learn to play it.

Full-screen mode support

Wow! You haven’t experienced Plants vs. Zombies until you play the game in full screen mode on your computer! It’s beautiful to look at and everything is so BIG! I LOVE it!

Great design of game

I love how the designers and developers of the game come up, first with the association of plants and zombies. I certainly wouldn’t have thought of that connection. And of course, I really enjoy how the achievements screen digs deep into the dirt to show all the trophies or achievements you can get and adding the zombie and Bookworm near the bottom.

Challenging game play

The game, although easy to understand and play, can be quite challenging. You have limited resources available and have to strategically place your weapons and tools in the best way to fend off the attack. You must make good choices of whether to get a sunflower to get more sunlight points (to buy more weapons) and risk a zombie attack or buy a weapon and needing to wait a while longer for the sunlight points.

Mini-Games(needs to be unlocked)

There’s twenty different games in the Mini-Games category which are unlocked when you reach a specific point in Adventure. Each of the twenty games are quite different in gameplay and well worth the fun in unlocking.

Puzzle games(needs to be unlocked)

There are ten different games involving the Vasebreaker, in which you break a vase to uncover what’s hidden inside it. It can be a zombie or a plant. The fun is uncovering them and making sure that the zombies don’t get to your house because unlike the Adventure game, there’s no lawnmower to stop it.

Survival games (needs to be unlocked)

These are intensive games that involve five zombie waves in each. You are essentially playing the entire daytime front lawn stage in one game, but of course, dealing with five waves of zombies. Good luck.

Trophy/achievements screen

A lot of people who like to view trophies screens will like the achievements screen that Plants vs. Zombies has. And there’s a lot of achievements available so you’ll certainly be playing for a long time to get them all.

Variety of zombies, weapons, stages keeps it fun

Similar to a previous point about having different stages, Plants vs. Zombies offers a variety of different zombies, weapons and of course stages that make the game a lot of fun and not boring. At the end or completion of each stage, you’ll unlock a special weapon that you can use in the next stage. And very likely, you’ll encounter a different zombie that may be much harder to destroy. But that’s the fun of the game.

Last line of defense: lawn mower, pool cleaner, roof cleaner, definitely a game saver

Although you have a limited amount of resources and there will likely be times when the zombies breach through your line of defense, it’s nice to know that there’s still just that *one* last line of defense: the lawn mower that may “just” save your butt, or your brain. However, once the lawn mower is used to mow down that zombie, you will have to make sure that no zombie passes by or it’ll be game over.

Resumes game where you left off

I much enjoy being able to exit out of the game by pressing the Home button and then being able to resume the game where I left off. Sometimes, you just don’t have the time to properly press on the Menu button and exit out that way. It’s nice that the game will remember where you were before you hit the Home button.

Option of resuming or starting new game

Similar to the previous point, when running the game later or at another time, the game will offer you the choice of either resuming the game, or starting a new game with a different profile. You can opt to play different profiles or allow friends or other family members with their own profile to play their game.

Mini-Game and Puzzle games available (needs to be unlocked)

There’s a “quick play” option available. However, you need to unlock it first by playing the Adventure first.

Volume slider for music and sound effects

I love being able to control the level of music and sound effects for my game, as many of you may have already known.

I Didn’t Like:

No Facebook connect option

Considering that PopCap games offers Facebook Connect for the Bejeweled Blitz! game, and how popular the Plants vs. Zombies game is, I am surprised that there is no such Facebook integration for Plants vs. Zombies. Perhaps, it’s an oversight, but I think it’s a big mistake for PopCap Games to not offer it as I’m sure it will really bring PvZ to a wider audience.

No two or multi-player option

I think especially on the computer that Plants vs. Zombies could be a great two-player game where you can have one player using the keyboard and the other using the mouse to control either the zombies (as a player vs. player game) or 2 vs 1 with two players playing with each other as a team. I think this could be a great way to enhance the gameplay

Can’t play tunes from your iTunes library

Again, I can understand the reasoning behind not supporting background music playback of your iTunes library since it would ruin the eerie mood of the game, but still, it would be nice to allow the player to decide.

Can’t access Mini-Games or Puzzle games until I get past certain stages in Adventure

This is one area I don’t understand. Many games offer a quick play option to allow someone to play a quick game without going through the whole adventure. So, why does PopCap Games have to force the player to play and finish the Adventure first before being able to access Quick Play? This is one area I have a hard time understanding.

Can’t access Survival games until the Adventure game is completed

Again, similar sentiment about not being able to play any Survival games until the Adventure game is completed. This can be a big damper, but then, who wants to play 5 waves of zombies anyway?

Extras like Zen Garden, Crazy Dave’s shop, Almanac aren’t unlocked until a stage is completed

Many of these bonus features aren’t unlocked until you reach a certain stage in Adventure, but thankfully, the Crazy Dave’s shop is unlocked in the first few stages which makes battling zombies much easier.

Review Summary

Plants vs. Zombies for the PC is a very simple and easy to play game involving zombies who are out to eat the brains of humans and plants and its army of weapons that try to fend off the zombie attack. The game is challenging and exciting with many stages and levels offering different weapons, zombies and even some side stages that truly make it fun. My main complaint is that although there are many extras like the games and features, you have to play enough stages or levels to unlock them. However, after unlocking, you’ll certainly appreciate them since they’re all well worth the effort. Plants vs. Zombies for the PC is certainly one game that will make you want to play it over and over again, if not to fight off the zombies, but to get the next weapon or discover the next zombie.

Don’t forget that there’s also a Plants vs. Zombies for the Mac and of course, the Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad too!

Check out my review of Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad as I’ve shown how the first stages are done plus to give you a good feel of how the iPhone version is slightly different from the PC version.

Plants vs. Zombies (Mac)

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