Ridiculous as it Sounds, and Even More Addicting
By: Samuel Gronseth
Issue date: 3/12/10 Section: News
On April Fools' day, 2009, Popcap Games (makers of Peggle and Bejewled) announced Plants vs. Zombies with a ridiculous animated music video featuring a sunflower singing about how we do not want zombies on our lawn (seriously, look it up on Youtube). Being April Fools' day, it was praised for being one of the better pranks of the gaming industry that year.
Fortunately, to everyone's surprise, it was not a prank.
Plants vs. Zombies is a variation on the tower defense genre: Cartoony zombies will walk along five or six set lanes, and the player must place various plants (using "sun" as a resource) in order to keep the zombie horde from reaching the house, or they will eat your brains (as zombies tend to do).
There are over 40 different kinds of plants, such as the peashooter, which simply shoots peas at the zombies, the sunflower, which provides sun, and the doom-shroom, which colorfully explodes in a huge, zombie-frying blast.
There are also many different kinds of zombies besides the typical, garden-variety zombie: Some will pole-vault over your first plant, some will dig under to attack your defenses from behind and some will even spawn backup zombies as they do the Thriller dance toward your plants.
Your strategy will have to change depending on the time of day, your location and which of these zombies is coming toward you (the game will let you see before each level starts), giving the game much more depth than one would expect at first.
A supercute art style and a quirky soundtrack make the overall presentation of Plants vs. Zombies really shine. Plants vs. Zombies is not very demanding of your computer.
Any modern laptop should be able to run it perfectly fine, and its availability on Mac means that you can play it no matter what kind of computer you have.
Besides that, it only costs $20 (less if you have a Steam account), so even we broke college students can afford it. For the exact hardware requirements, visit http://www.popcap.com
Plants vs. Zombies is one of the best games to play when you just need a few minutes to unwind from the stress of intense studying or personal drama. Just make sure you time yourself. This game is next to impossible to stop playing. I honestly cannot think of anything negative to say about the game. It is hardly the best game ever, but it is undeniably fun and nearly flawless in its presentation.
The Christian Perspective: When playing video games, we, as Christians, should be careful with what we are playing. Thankfully, Plants vs. Zombies has very little in the way of offensive content, and what it does have is very cartoony and silly. Zombies will have heads and arms pop off, get blown to ashes and get run over by lawn mowers. However, there is no blood, and it is so cartoony that it is no more offensive than Road Runner cartoons.
Fortunately, to everyone's surprise, it was not a prank.
Plants vs. Zombies is a variation on the tower defense genre: Cartoony zombies will walk along five or six set lanes, and the player must place various plants (using "sun" as a resource) in order to keep the zombie horde from reaching the house, or they will eat your brains (as zombies tend to do).
There are over 40 different kinds of plants, such as the peashooter, which simply shoots peas at the zombies, the sunflower, which provides sun, and the doom-shroom, which colorfully explodes in a huge, zombie-frying blast.
There are also many different kinds of zombies besides the typical, garden-variety zombie: Some will pole-vault over your first plant, some will dig under to attack your defenses from behind and some will even spawn backup zombies as they do the Thriller dance toward your plants.
Your strategy will have to change depending on the time of day, your location and which of these zombies is coming toward you (the game will let you see before each level starts), giving the game much more depth than one would expect at first.
A supercute art style and a quirky soundtrack make the overall presentation of Plants vs. Zombies really shine. Plants vs. Zombies is not very demanding of your computer.
Any modern laptop should be able to run it perfectly fine, and its availability on Mac means that you can play it no matter what kind of computer you have.
Besides that, it only costs $20 (less if you have a Steam account), so even we broke college students can afford it. For the exact hardware requirements, visit http://www.popcap.com
Plants vs. Zombies is one of the best games to play when you just need a few minutes to unwind from the stress of intense studying or personal drama. Just make sure you time yourself. This game is next to impossible to stop playing. I honestly cannot think of anything negative to say about the game. It is hardly the best game ever, but it is undeniably fun and nearly flawless in its presentation.
The Christian Perspective: When playing video games, we, as Christians, should be careful with what we are playing. Thankfully, Plants vs. Zombies has very little in the way of offensive content, and what it does have is very cartoony and silly. Zombies will have heads and arms pop off, get blown to ashes and get run over by lawn mowers. However, there is no blood, and it is so cartoony that it is no more offensive than Road Runner cartoons.
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