Spliced sunflowers are your most lucrative element and key to any strategy.

With the recent spike in zombie inspired game, movie and book production one would suspect that this sub-genre of horror, once the ingredient to palpable nightmares, is finally running dry for content. Prepped by co-operative shooters and visceral screenplays, most of us probably know how to better stave off the next zombie-pocalypse than a nuclear one. Heck, you might even welcome the day when you and your buddies can arm yourself to the teeth in the name of zombie eradication. That would be until you played Plants vs Zombies (PvZ), or as I affectionately refer to it: “Lawn of the Dead”, which facetiously illustrates that mulching undead into fodder for a freshly fertilized front lawn is a practice everyone can enjoy.

It’s an amusing and odd juxtaposition – plants disposing of zombies, but this tower-defense concept is fleshed out so charismatically and with so many extras that even after hours it remains fresh despite fairly banal core game-play. Driven by their eternal volition for brains, PvZ’s zombies will limp, swim, dig, hop and dance (Thriller style) across your fortified turf towards Crazy Dave’s (your visually relapsing epileptic companion) front door. These are not your 28 Days Later breed, they don’t vomit blood (though coins are occasionally forthcoming), but every one in the lot is cleverly equipped to make up for deficiencies in speed and intelligence. Whether it be a stiff-armed fullback or a pole-vaulting track star, the roughly 25 zombie types become systematically dismembered as you strategically pick and plant 49 different garden varieties in their path. On paper this  may sound overwhelming, but the games progression is so forgiving and painstakingly slow that you can beat nearly every level using only a few deviations of a single strategy. To boot, there is only one difficult level: I’m Too Young To Die.

Equipping yourself for the incoming onslaught is facilitated by advanced intel in the form of over-the-fence espionage.

This is the games biggest weakness; it never really becomes a challenge. The standard adventure mode, which must be played through to unlock more plants and, most importantly, the numerous mini-games that will keep you occupied well after you’ve completed it, is especially bland. Though you’re awarded at the end of every level with seeds to sow new plant varieties, these additions turn out to be only slight mutations of the few core phenotypes necessary to contend on PvZs rather meager stage variety (day, night, water and roof). Even with a continually evolving arsenal you’ll spend the first few minutes of practically every level doing the exact same thing: planting a batch of sunflowers to horde the sunlight needed to develop your garden-army, and then sitting back to watch the fireworks. If not for the numerous tangents in the form of mini-games and puzzles, PvZ would wilt from overexposure.

The almanac provides a field guide about encountered zombies as well as witty commentary worth a few laughs.

Fortunately, the developers at PopCap did such an awesome job of mucking up their core design into so many variations that PvZ more than makes up for it’s humdrum adventure mode. Whether it be toppling over zombies with walnuts in Zombie-Bowling, or tending to an anodyne, Pokemon-esque “Gotta catch em all” Zen Garden, it’s the eclectic assortment of arcade-style games that will keep players coming back time and time again. My personal favorite is I, Zombie is a role reversal mode were you enlist zombies to devour the very plants you’ve been using thus far to quell the undead. Akin to the massively popular Call of Duty: World at War modification – Nazi Zombies, PvZ offers a similar survival mode in which you must parry unyielding waves of undead, substituting peas and cabbage for lead and grenades, of course. My personal record is 44 flags before getting trampled by zombie piloted Zambonis. It’s really shame that this mode can only be played on one level set and reinforces how much better PvZ could be with slightly more polish.

Your Zen Garden would be soothing too if it spewed forth gold coins.

It’s hard to say whether PvZ is a great game or not. It doesn’t set out to be genre redefining and the core action is hackneyed, yet if rated on the sum of it’s parts it’s an excellent gaming value. Taking into account the price tag of $9.95, the hours of entertainment and cheap laughs it provides, PvZ becomes difficult not to recommend. Presentation and design are hilarious! The designers must have had as much of a hoot making it as I did playing it -for the first few hours, that is.

Final Verdict: 3/5

Pros: Delightful, amusing zombie caricatures. Good use of rewards and extras to keep you coming back. Large plant/zombie variety. Great price point.

Cons: Learning curve too slow, no difficulty adjustment. Core game-play is pretty stale. Generally too easy.

Vengence comes in the form of corn on the cob tactical nukes.