Gamertell

Title: Plants vs. Zombies
Price: $2.99
System(s): iPhone, iPod Touch
Release Date: February 15, 2010
ESRB Rating: “Everyone” for Animated Blood and Cartoon Violence
Pros: Excellent port of PC original, catchy soundtrack, over 50 stages, lots of room for strategic creativity, tons of plant and zombie types, affordable for anyone.
Cons: Puzzle modes found in PC version have been cut due probably due to space limitations.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up, 95/100, A, * * * * 1/2 out of 5

Plants vs. Zombies was a great success when it was released on PC back in 2009. It joined the vast number of highly addictive yet surprisingly simple titles developed by PopCap Games. PvZ has made its way from the computer screen to Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch devices for $2.99. It retains everything that made the original great and needs to be a part of anyone’s mobile game collection.

Ready, Set, Plant!

PvZ is a tower defense game unlike any other before it. Its premise involves protecting your house (and your brains) from a zombie horde. The only thing standing between your house and the zombies are various plants that are ready to lay down their lives for you. The arsenal of plants you have are range from peashooters, watermelon launchers, cherry bombs and wall-nuts. Each plant is effective against all zombie types but bringing the right type of plants into battle will make things much easier.

Know Your Enemy

You’ll fight zombies that are as unique as the plants themselves. You’ll start by fighting the basic Garden – Variety Zombie and move on to more complex types such as the Dancing Zombie, Football Zombie and the Zomboni. They move from right to left across a grid that is five squares long and nine squares wide. Your plants must fight off increasingly difficult waves of zombies in a single level in order to earn more plant types and money to expand the game.

Seeds of Victory

The gameplay is very straightforward. Sunlight is the currency you use to create plants. You earn sunlight by planting sunflowers and grabbing sun that fall from the sky. You then use that currency to choose what plants you want to use. Selecting a plant and placing it is easily done by tapping on the plant’s icon on the left side of the screen, and touching the space where you want it. Multi-touch controls are not necessary to maximize your effectiveness in PvZ.

The coverage most of us have seen in PvZ leads most to believe the levels only take place on the lawn but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There are some levels that take place at night which bring in totally new plant types and strategies. Plants you would use in daylight can’t be used at night until later in the game. There’s even some rooftop stages where you have to take into account the angle of your attacks. Mini games such as Wall-nut Bowling and Wack-a-Zombie modes help to break up the standard gameplay. Sadly some modes did not make the move to the iPhone/iPod Touch version. A take on Bejeweled PvZ style and a mode that let’s you play as the zombies aren’t present.

Blooming With Fun

Purchasing PvZ is really a no-brainer (no pun intended). It contains all the levels from the original and automatically saves whenever you exit to the main menu. There’s no need to worry about loss of quality here because PvZ on iPhone/iPod Touch looks and plays just like the PC version.

Purchase [App Store]