We’ve played a number of tower defence games from the App Store, but none of them have been as memorable as Plants vs. Zombies. The full version is one addictive package that is bound to suck you in with its variety of puzzles, mini-games and challenges; whilst the iPhone port has only the Adventure and Quick Play modes, plus a handful of achievements albeit at a rather reduced price. Undoubtedly, the adventure mode alone is worth your £1.79 but hopefully the game designers at PopCap will add in those missing modes. If you own the game already for another platform, there’s nothing here that you won’t have seen before; except perhaps, the PvZ rendition of China.

The interface has been trimmed to fit everything onto the iPhone’s small screen, and works as you’d expect. Plants may be selected and placed by dragging them out onto the field, or simply tapping one and then placing it where you’d like it. A nice touch is that tapping on a coin or a sun pickup (more on that later) won’t interrupt this selection or place the plant where you didn’t mean to. The only quirks that we could find was when there were many plants or zombies or both on the screen at once; even the iPhone 3GS was displaying some slowdown issues. This is a minor niggle that didn’t impact upon enjoyment of the game.

Yes, this is the full Adventure mode from the desktop edition, including a handful of mini games that are interspersed throughout the main portions of the game. You’ll be bowling with walnuts, going for a round of whack a zombie, battling against micro enemies and more. Each of these is fairly easy due to the randomisation of plants that you get but nonetheless they are great fun.

Leading on from there, the rest of the levels have a lot more strategy. You have to defend your house from the undead—day, night, in the front yard, by the pool, even on the roof—which begins in a fairly uncomplicated fashion until you start amassing your seed collection beyond the initial six slots that you are given. Before you play each level you will be able to tell which zombies that you’re about to face, and so you can plan accordingly. The seed catalogue includes offensive, defensive and resource producing plants and your aim is to have a balance so that you don’t end up overwhelmed by zombies.

Sunflowers are your main asset. They produce sun which is used to buy most plants—some actually cost no sun to plant—and which also falls from the sky on the daytime levels. Many levels will involve planting a good number of sunflowers to get the resource production going, and then starting to build offensive plants. There’s all sorts; pea shooters that shoot a constant stream at the undead, cherry bombs that have a decent blast radius, spiked plants that cause damage underfoot, and defensive plants that include walnuts that are a great barrier to stop your main plants getting eaten, or garlic that makes zombies change lanes. Some plants are multistage; pool levels require that you place lilypads before you can plant land dwelling plants on them, and mushrooms require a coffee bean in order for them to work in the day time.

Finding the right strategy can pose a problem sometimes. But, you will usually get along fine if you devote ten slots for sun production, planting cheap one use bombs early on such as the Squash or Potato Mine to minimise spend whilst stockpiling resources, and then building up a couple of rows of plant firepower. Strategies definitely vary once more plants become available, as plants become superseded by better ones. If you’re really struggling, there are plenty of walkthroughs for the PC version that will translate over to the iPhone without a hitch.

The same due care and attention paid to the iPhone port of Peggle has been paid here. Auto screen rotate, save state and iPod music are all included here and it makes the game ideal for when you’re out and about. The presentation is definitely a cut above most iPhone games, with some subtle and not so subtle hints towards other PopCap games, the hilarious Almanac with some great interviews with the plants, and of course Crazy Dave who sells you all kinds of upgrades to help defeat the zombies.

In all, this is exactly what the doctor ordered. Plants vs. Zombies is a fantastic game that will take you several hours to plough through, and even without the extra content that you get in other versions it is still on sale at a very reasonable price point. Just don’t get it if you value your time!

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Plants vs. Zombies HD, A

Review by Ben Briggs, June 09, 2010

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