Monday 6 June 2011

Plants vs Zombies (NDS)

Gamespot score:8.0(Great)

my score:7.8

(+)Pros:-Same great game imported to the DS with all new touch screen features,-simple and easy to learn, -new multiplayer is great,- the game is brimming with post game content.

(-)Cons:- Still too easy early on,- the touch screen can be abit too flooded to click properly,- if you own any other version of the game this is practically pointless.

gameplay time:40 hours+


Plants vs zombies..since I started this blog, I have already reviewed this game twice. Now....its a third time. Kinda bored to review a same game thrice, but still, good game is good, so here I am, projecting opinion on this already so popular game. If you havent played plants vs zombies, you arent only missing out on the gaming side, but your are also missing on life. Plants vs zombies, like angry birds, is an incredibly popular game thats on Iphones and possibly every other electronic device out there. While originated from the PC, they did a version for many other devices, including the DS, which is the one I'm doing today.




Plants vs zombies has a very simple, idiotic and yet effective storyline. While the game does not actually need a storyline at ALL, theres a very small one here. You play as an unlucky house owner, whose house is being set as a target by brain eating zombies. While this may actually seem like a bad thing, you have your own self defense, plants that shoot at the zombies, and using them, you defend yourself from these mind hungry fools. Also, you have a crazy neighbour, who seems to be a pro at zombie killing with plants as well, and he gives you advice and sells you useful stuff to help combat the zombies. Together with your neighbour dave and your plants, you fight against a horde that none has seen before.



You have seen this before right? Cause if you havent, you have
been seriously missing out.

I have explained the concept of PVZ twice already...but here is the gist once more. You play as a poor houshold owner who is being attacked by zombies, and you use plants to your advantage to fight back. The zombies invade your front lawn, back yard, and your rooftop. And while in any of these 3 areas, the place is split into lanes, and each lane has its own amount of grids. On this grids, you plant plants that face right, and zombies come from the right...so you know what happens next. And if these zombies will keep advancing left, and if they are not killed, they will eat through all your plants, and eventually when they reach the left end of the lane, you lose. How do you win? You survive waves of zombies until they are over. There are about 50 levels in the adventure mode, and about 20+ minigames to play after the adventure is done with.

In these levels, you build plants to defend yourself, but there are certain plant varieties. Majority of the plants just attack your enemies, in one way or another. They fire ammunation toward the right (some left). There are also support plants that boost your other plants' damage, give them additional effects, defend other plants.. and so on. We also have suicidal plants that blow themselves up to take a bunch of zombies with them. But all these require sun, which is your basic income for planting plants. Sunflowers fufill that role. Together with strategies, you can make the ultimate defense to stop the zombies from advancing into your home. There are over 50 selectable plants and about 20 zombie types to battle, meaning that theres quite some variety in the game.

On the DS however, you do everything with the stylus, which acts alot like the mouse in the PC version. Its still simple point and click action, so everyone will be able to enjoy the game. Theres also a multiplayer option, where one player plays as the zombies while the other plays as plants. Plant players do the same as always, while zombie players play a whole new style. Zombie players use tombstones for income, and they have to defend a few stationary zombies from being gunned to death. Instead of the plants, which just stay in one spot and shoot, zombie players' zombies actually move toward the other side. The style of gameplay is interesting, to say the least, as one will never know what kind of zombie the other player will use.


Believe me, you will NOT like this minigame.

Aside from the good new features, PVZ on the DS is inferior to the PC version. Like all the other versions it suffers from incredible simplicity at the beginning, where there is almost no challenge at all. Exclusive to the DS version of the game comes the cluttered touch screen, which is common matter in later levels. With the stylus, its hard to click where you want to put your plants in where theres too many zombies around blocking your click point, it gets hard to replace wallnuts immediately when eaten. Also with the cluttered screen, its hard to see which plant got eaten by what zombie. Finally, the DS has been given almost too little new additions to be considered a new game, if you own any other versions of the game, stay clear, it will bore you, what you have played before is all here.

The DS version of plants vs zombies is inferior to the PC version, and possibly all the other versions. If you have a PC, Iphone, Ipad, Xbox360 or a PS3, get those versions, they are cheaper and easily better. But if you have neither version and own a DS, its not too bad of an idea to pick up PVZ for your DS.



Happy gaming.