DEVELOPER: PopCap
Played on: PC
Initial impression: Defensive gardening!
Liked:
- Challenges in Adventure Mode
- Other Modes
Disliked:
- Randomness
On The Fence:
- Extra Junk
This one is straight forward. The Zombies are attacking! Use your sentient plants to defend your brains! In what is pretty much the epitome of tower defense, you use different types of plants to take out waves of zombies intent on taking over your house. The plants all run on "sun" power, generated by - what else? - Sunflowers. Using the sun power as currency you can purchase offensive and defensive plants, as well as upgraded variants, to take down the ever-attacking, ever-evolving undead. The zombies have a few tricks up their dusty sleeves, with some wearing buckets on their heads, riding pogo sticks or starting a disco dance party. Sometimes the weather works in their favor, with fog obscuring half your yard.
As you go through the Adventure mode the new plants and the adapted zombies are part of the challenge. Often, you can rely on a lot of the same strategy, but some levels require you to use specific items. Some plants will blow the fog away. Others will explode when stepped on. Some fry whole lines of zombies all at once.
The other challenge modes, playing the other side as a zombie or only using the items available to you over time from a conveyor belt or a series of clay pots you have to smash, are great. Since it's PopCap, some of the other game modes imitate their popular games like Bejeweled and InsanAquarium. It's a lot of fun.
Disliked
It's tough to really call out the game on flaws since it's a casual puzzle game, but if I had to - and I feel I do - I'd say the most annoying thing has to be the occasional randomness that causes you to fail. They say that every time you fire up the MS Windows game Solitaire that you should be able to win. Same could be said for this game, but in both instances I'm going to tell you this - sometimes the game screws you over. It makes winning impossible. It sets up conditions or scenarios where no matter what you do, you will lose. I had to restart a puzzle-mode about 6 times before the conditions were suitable to even try. It wasn't just that one time, either.
On The Fence
It's a game about planting mutant flora to take down invading corpses. The main game is exactly that. The side games are also about that. There's some bonus junk that seems... pointless. The Zen Garden, where you raise money-sprouting flowers, for example. Yeah, I'm doing it but I don't quite see... why.
I bought this game through Valve's Steam store during one of their ridiculous Christmas sales. I suggest that if you like puzzle games and this sale comes around again you should buy it. It's SO worth the $5 I paid for it, and it may be worth as much as $10 depending on how much you like puzzle games. I've even played it on the iPad and it works perfectly. Maybe they'll release more game modes or an extended Adventure mode some time...
Great game. 9/10
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