Zombies are assaulting your house...or at least, very slowly shambling across your yard...and it's up to you to plop down a wide variety of attack plants in five horizontal lanes to stave them off. There are quite a few different zombie types--one is a former football player who's extra hard to take down; another looks like Thriller-era Michael Jackson and spawns backup-dancing zombies to protect itself--and even more kinds of plants to use against them, allowing you to freeze zombies, blow them up, turn them against their undead brethren, and more. You have to actively gather sunshine (the game's currency) by clicking on it as it falls from the sky and is generated from certain plants, so the game actually takes on quite a hectic pace in later levels. Don't let the game's cutesy look fool you; it's pretty challenging.
Plants Vs. Zombies has 50 levels in it, many with different mitigating gameplay mechanics. In the night levels, you don't gain sunshine automatically, only from plants that produce it; as a tradeoff, you get to use nocturnal mushrooms that wilt in the sunlight but act as bombs and other special attacks at night.
The company may have amped up its design chops a little on Plants Vs. Zombies, but its reputation as a purveyor of desktop distractions is still evident. The game runs at a minuscule fixed resolution of 800x600, and if you're playing it in a window, it pauses itself the second the window loses focus. You know, if you happen to alt-tab out to some TPS reports when your boss walks by, or something.
It wasn't long ago when a lot of "real" gamers scoffed at PopCap's success. Cheapo fluff like Zuma and Bejeweled was made for soccer moms and grandparents, not hardcore headshot masters like you and me, right? Those days must be over, if the buzz around the Plants Vs. Zombies release is any indication. Yesterday my Twitter feed--which is mostly full of game developers and members of the games press--was rife with chatter over this game, certainly more so than any recent "hardcore" news or products. I think that's a pretty telling sign that PopCap and its brand of inexpensive, low-impact game are here to stay.
Any of you putting down your Dual Shocks and Wii Remotes long enough to play Plants Vs. Zombies?
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