Plants Vs Zombies

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Plants Vs Zombies

Postby Dr. Ambiguous » Mon Nov 16, 2015 7:35 am

I'm on a roll tonight, as I've hammered out my 4th review so far (3rd I'm posting here, since I submitted one of them as an article here).



Quick Breakdown: A fun game that can help kill some time, sadly it’s hampered by repetitiveness and shallowness.
Length: 7-8 hours (Main game)
Genre: Tower Defense
Score: 6/10

Full Review: Plants Vs Zombies (from here on PVZ) is a tower defense game in which you must defend yourself and your home from invading zombies, and your only line of defense are your plants.

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The game uses a map that is formatted as a grid in which you place your plants. Zombies come at you from the right side of the screen and slowly shamble towards your home on the left side of the screen. The zombies crave brains, but that doesn’t stop them from eating your plants when they get too close to them. This of course is a bad thing, seeing as you must use your plants to fend off the zombies.

You start with about a half dozen different plants at your disposal. You have pea shooters, which fire peas as an offensive projectile at the invading zombies. Walnuts serve as a super sturdy plant that acts as a barricade, protecting the plants behind it (until the zombies eat through it of course). Another key plant is the humble sunflower, which will generate sun for you, which you need to purchase plants. (You start each level with 50 sun).

As you progress through the game you’ll unlock more plants, further bolstering you in your fight against the zombies. Likewise, the zombies will get stronger as well. They’ll start simple, by arming themselves with traffic cones and metal buckets as armour, but later on you’ll have to contend with zombies that charge you decked out in full (America) football gear, and others that will pole vault over your plants.

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The environment of the level will change as well, first by increasing the number of lanes from 5 to 6. Then it’ll feature night levels, in which your sunflowers won’t work, so you’ll have to rely on mushrooms to generate sun instead. (You’ll gain offensive mushrooms as well, all of which only work at night). Eventually you’ll have to fortify your defenses in the water as well, as you’ll have a backyard with a pool in it that the zombies will attempt to assault. Later night levels will also feature the pool, as well as fog that obscures half the screen. The final set of levels take place on the roof of your house, which requires you to place pots before you can lay down plants.

Despite these changes, the strategy used for the duration of the game changes very little, and this is my main criticism of the game: it’s repetitive. The changes themselves are too minor to make a great difference, and do little to vary the gameplay. Furthermore, the difficulty of the game is extremely low, not once during the main game did I succumb to the zombies. Oddly, the mini-games included as bonuses offered a greater challenge, though not by much.

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On that note, in addition to the story mode, the game contains a puzzle mode, mini-game mode, and survival mode. It gives a little bit more to do in the game, but little of it is noteworthy.

PVZ is a decent little game to help kill time, but it’s shallow, and that detracts from both I’s quality and longevity. Still, worth a shot if you grab it on sale.
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