Vital Stats

Genre: RTS (Tower Defense)
Players: 1
Online: None

Developer: PopCap
Publisher: PopCap
ESRB Rating: E10+
Release Date: 2/15/10

Platforms

• iPhone
• PC
• PS3
• 360

The iPhone port of Plants vs. Zombies isn’t quite as feature rich as its counterparts, but it’s also a tenth of the price. The smart tower defense gameplay and adorable aesthetic remain intact, and the touch interface is actually superior to other ports. It’s only a pity that the reduced content will cut down on the time you’ll spend with such an excellent game.

The strategy genre was born for portable gaming. When your success is limited by the strength of your brain, you stand to benefit from bite-sized agency. Consider chess by mail as an extreme example. The post wasn’t just a primitive version of online multiplayer; it gave you until the postman’s return to consider your next move. When you have six days to consider a strategic move that takes five seconds to execute, you look smart. Take that along with the easy correspondence between moving pawns and touchscreens, and you start to see how the tropes of the strategy genre play to the strengths of portable platforms.

It’s a good thing that strategy is on the rise, because otherwise we might miss out on offbeat gems like Plants vs. Zombies. It’s a tower defense game built on an absurdly logical conclusion: if you wanted to defend your home from a horde of brain-eating monsters, the best infantry would have no brains at all. So, in your horticultural wisdom, you plant a lawn of Peashooters, Wall-nuts, and other zombie-hostile veggies.

Bring Out Your Dead!
The gameplay is classic tower-defense attrition. You begin each stage by picking 7-9 seeds to last you through 2-4 zombie waves. Your brains are, of course, forfeit when even one zombie shambles into your home. You plant your defenses by spending sunlight, which falls from the sky and pops out of certain plants. Your lawn is a limited space, so the fulcrum between sunlight production and violent greenery is where you’ll ply your strategy.

Too Soon?

Plants vs. Zombies keeps the gameplay lively by introducing new zombies with every stage. Zombies died on pogo-sticks, Zamboni machines, and attached to balloons. However, you’ll discover seeds for magnet-shrooms, tire-popping thorns, and cacti that counter every trick they use to chew and circumvent your defenses. With 49 plants and 26 zombies stretched across 50 levels, the game has plenty of novelty to offer. The lock-and-key relationships between plants and zombies is too simple to hold your interest past a playthrough, but balancing are against resource management keeps the game at par for typical tower defense.

Every fifth level is a bonus round that departs from strictly formulaic tower defense. Instead, you’ll defend by bowling, place random plants, and even fight the horde by whack-a-mole. None of these games are as substantial as the main levels, but they’re all instantly accessible and you’ll find yourself revisiting them even after you finish the main game.

A Dead Horse
The replayable minigames are good because, once you’ve finished adventure mode, there’s not much left to the game. You can replay adventure mode with a partially-randomized seed selection, use quick-play to jump to any stage, or work on achievements. However, all three options amount to simply replaying the same game. It’s well and good for the average ruminant, but if you prefer fresh vegetables to your own cud, you may feel something’s missing.

Undeath from above.

Actually, several things are missing. The zen garden, survival mode, and several minigames that graced the PC release were cut from the iPhone port. In truth, many of these cuts were good: you probably don’t need another slot machine in a minigame compilation. However, an endless mode is conspicuously absent. Without procedurally generated content, the iPhone port of Plants vs. Zombies is exactly the sum of its parts.

Endless mode may have been excluded for technical constraints. In later levels–when projectiles are streaming furiously, but aren’t making a dent in the zombie stampede–Plants vs. Zombies starts dropping frames. It’s to developer PopCap’s credit that the touch controls are still mostly functional during a lag storm, but working controls aren’t much use when you can’t see to plan. This problem only occurs at the end of the last few levels, but it happens reliably and at the worst possible time.

The other 95% of the game is lovingly rendered with whimsy and humor, however. The premise isn’t the only ridiculous thing about Plants vs. Zombies. The shambling animation, coupled with that vacant zombie stare is as heartwarming and charming as the cannibal dead can get. There’s also a suburban almanac that collects vital stats on plants and zombies, including non-sequester descriptions that are just brilliant. The music is a peppy sort of gothic techno that sounds like Castlevania on a sugar high. It completely overbalances the game’s modest shortcomings.

Brains
Plants vs. Zombies is a pure tower defense experience. It’s simple enough to be accessible, but is presented with an absurdist flare that makes the game feel sophisticated. There’s been a significant content cut on the iPhone port relative to other distributions, but the game’s core is intact and still loads of fun. It’s easy to recommend this game to anyone.

What It Costs: $3

What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $10 (buy)
•To The Genre Fan: $10 (buy)
•To The Casual: $10 (buy)