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This is largely the same review from 2016, just editing and cutting down a lot of the nonsense.

In 2011, I finally got a Steam account and one of the first games I put on it was Plants vs. Zombies. Admittedly, while Plants vs. Zombies slides to the more "casual" side of the spectrum and is quite popular on mobile systems, but it's one of the few casual games that's still fun, and along with games in The Orange Box and the Humble Indie Bundle, is one of the headlining games that defined the summer of 2011 for me (I'm sad to say that I first beat the game on the Mac side of Steam, but it was slow and even kinda ruined the ending sequence). I did install Windows XP on my MacBook, and that's where I continued to play it. It's basically a "tower defense" game where you put plants in grids while zombies come down the line to try to get to the other side (that would be your brain), though the scream is always male. (Maybe for the ladies playing, that could be the husband/boyfriend screaming that his wife's brain is being munched on by the zombies?)

Like any good zombie storyline, they don't waste time explaining how the zombie apocalypse happened, it just does. All the zombies are male, as female zombies might be seen negatively, and besides, the zombies all have different techniques but makes similar grunts, so it's not really necessary. One Zombie type was removed, though...there's a disco-themed "Dancing Zombie" who will summon "backup dancers" that come out of the ground and eat plants. It's extremely frustrating to beat this guy the first time around. Originally, it was a distinctly Michael Jackson zombie in an homage to "Thriller" but after Jackson's actual death in 2009, the estate demanded its removal.

The Adventure mode is what must be done before the mini-games and puzzle modes (which are actually pretty fun, though the vasebreaker levels get difficult on later levels), and it takes you through five worlds with two mini-games and 8 levels apiece, with the worlds being the front yard (day, pretty easy), the front yard (night, no sun falling from the sky, so you'll have to rely on mushrooms to help out), the back yard (with a pool and water-based plants), the back yard at night (challenging), and the roof (daytime, hectic, but not as challenging as World 4). There's no night-time roof level (it cuts straight to the final boss), but I think that it would be cool if there was, then have the final boss actually inside. On the other hand, a night-time roof level would be insanely hard, given that at that point, they start rolling out the really tough guys, like an ogre zombie that takes forever to kill, launches a smaller imp zombie, and instead of eating plants, just smashes them with a telephone pole or a road sign (or, more rarely, another zombie).

I was pleased and amused by the "Portal Combat" minigame, which in addition to the Mortal Kombat pun, was also a reference to the then-new Portal, which was alright since in 2011, both were relatively new to me anyway, making it timely even though in reality "The Cake Is a Lie" had long fallen out of fashion. Unfortunately, that was the year that PopCap Games was bought by EA, much to the collective grief of the gaming community, as everyone knew what happened to Westwood, Origin Systems, Bullfrog, and Maxis. The sequel, Plants Vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, released in 2013, would be a mobile-only free-to-play gimmick-based cash-in "mission pack sequel", despite some new plant ideas.

Honestly, if there was one real complaint that I had, besides the almost-endless ways you can spend money in-game (collected within the game, not real-life, as pre-EA PopCap didn't sponge customers for money at every opportunity), like growing the Tree of Wisdom or 10 slots for plants, would be a sandbox mode. Here, you would be able to put any zombie in for free and any plant for free.

FINAL RATING:   

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