Game Review: Plants vs. Zombies

I know, it's another old mobile game (ok, so it wasn't on mobile first), but what a game!  Plants vs. Zombies (PEGI-7) is a complete work of genius.  Originally released in 2009 it has spawned all sorts of other games, including Plants vs. Zombies 2, Garden Warfare, Zen Pinball and Heroes.  Originating as a tower defence game, it has successfully crept into card game territory and even third person shooter territory.  Considering its premise this is remarkable!

The idea of the game is that you are defending your house from a zombie apocalypse.  You do this by planting special plants in your garden that have different defensive abilities, from the sunflower (which creates your sun currency) to the peashooter, to walnuts, tallnuts, cherry bombs, chompers and so on...  The zombies also become more dangerous, beginning with a basic zombie and progressing all the way up to monsters like the gargantuar.  And at the end, there's Dr Zomboss to defeat.  The levels also have different settings - your front garden is just grass, your back garden has an ornamental pond, and in the end you're battling the undead on your roof.

There's a zombie on my lawn...!!

The game has a simple but engaging storyline, improved further by the addition of Crazy Dave (he's pretty hilarious).  It progresses well, being tricky without infuriating.  When I originally played it on iOS I think I ground through and unlocked a lot of things without paying - sadly the 'free' Android version we have now makes that impossible.  I don't think you'd be able to avoid paying real money to unlock some of the extra things.  That said, the main game is free, albeit with adverts.  (I know you can pay to get rid of the adverts, but it's not in the Google Family Library, so I don't want to do that on all our devices.)

The game really got into Seb's imagination.  We've been making zombies with air drying clay, pipecleaners and cardboard, and we've drawn MANY zombies onto paper and laminated them.  Once they're laminated you can play a live action PvZ game with the laminated cards!  (That's what he makes us do...)

This is a great game for all the family.  We've all been playing it - it's simple enough for Seb and complicated enough for mum and dad.  Thoroughly recommended.

[We have been playing using a Samsung Galaxy S7 and a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge]