Plants vs. Zombies review (XBLA)

Having been addicted to Plants vs. Zombies on the iPad, when I heard it was coming to Xbox Live Arcade, I have to admit I was pretty happy. A few concerns did raise their ugly head, such as how well this game would work without the benefit of a touch screen, however as soon as I loaded the game up any concerns soon disappeared.

Plants vs. Zombies places you as homeowner who is basically out to stop an army of invading zombies from overtaking your property. Aided by the ramblings and advice of your neighbour Crazy Dave, you must defend your home by using a variety of plants, while zombies invade your home from the front lawn, back lawn, swimming pool and rooftop. The main area of the game is the adventure mode described above, when you first start out you are given a few seeds to plant, which includes a sunflower. In order to plant your seeds and allow them to grow you must collect the suns that fall from the sunflower and from the sky. Each seed has a cost assigned to it, therefore you must keep collecting these until such time you can plant your selected seed, at which point you select a spot and hit the button for it to grow. Once the seed of your choice has been planted it will have the desired effect on the zombies, some shoot peas, eventually decapitating them, while others blow them up and my favourite plant, the chomper, devours them completely.  Other seeds within the game slow down the zombies, such as the wall-nut (a wall) and planterns (a shield for your plants). You also have a one-shot last line of defence in the line of lawn mowers and pool/roof cleaners, which mow down a whole line of zombies should they breach your defences, although once these are gone you do not get the benefit of using them again. As well as sunflowers there is a small mushroom which creates sun, although the mushrooms tend to fall asleep during the day, and given a lot of the seeds are fungus based this makes things slightly more difficult. To complicate things further, you only start seven seeds slots and although you have enough seeds to fill these, as the game goes on your end up with more seeds than slots, meaning you have to choose wisely depending on the situation you find yourself in. You will be given an opportunity to upgrade your slots later in the game, although you will always wish you had more. The most difficult part about this game is the zombies, the further you get into the game, the harder it gets. Although they start out with no protection, soon they are pole vaulting over your plants, wearing cones and buckets on their head and even seen driving large lawnmower type vehicles which completely devastate everything in their path. To make matters worse, sometimes gravestones pop up which means you can't plant in those areas, giving you even less space to take the zombies out. Thankfully your crazy neighbour Dave does have some tricks up his sleeve in the items he sells from his car boot, although these will cost you any hard earned money you have got from taking the zombies down. Goods Dave sells include coffee beans to wake up sleepy mushrooms and power-ups to make your plants ever more powerful, although these come at a cost both in terms of sun and seed slots. Thankfully the Xbox Live version is probably the best yet, as the controls are simple, and there is even more added value thanks to the Co-op and Versus modes which the game now includes. To control the game on Xbox Live you simply slide your analogue stick to the slot you want to plant on and hit the button, while selecting a seed is done by simply pressing the shoulder button. You can even speed up the collection of suns by pressing the trigger, which results in them coming straight to you. Multiplayer is the biggest addition to Plants vs. Zombies and it certainly doesn't disappoint. The game has both Versus and Co-op mode, allowing for some great party fun. The Versus Mode sees one person control the plants while the other person controls the zombies, the concept is the same as the single player mode in that the zombies must get to the house. The only difference here is if the plant controller hits three targets being held up by the zombies before they get to the house, then they win the match. Co-op mode is again similar to the single player, except this time both players work together to take down the zombies. There are a few subtle differences such as there being butter which allows one player to slow zombies down by placing it on top of its head. The main aim here is to work as a team to win and talk to each other, after all if someone goes ahead and put the wrong seeds down then you are going to lose. Finally the game also includes  Quick Play, Survival Mode and Mini games - which consist of things like wall-nut bowling, whack a zombie and all other manner of quick fire fun. Plants vs. Zombies is a wonderfully presented title, it looks very polished and colourful and is fantastic to look at. Even when the on-screen action gets frantic, things never seem to stall or slow down. The music is also very catchy, and there are some brilliant sound effects, all of which add even more value to the overall package. If you are looking for a unique, manic and highly addictive game on your Xbox 360 then look no further because Plants vs. Zombies is it. It’s got everything, decapitated heads, crazy dancing zombies and plenty of laughs. Get your points ready because this is not to be missed.

Rating : 9/10

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