Plants Vs. Zombies

Genre: Tower Defense

Players: 1

.

Review:

Plants Vs. Zombies is a Tower Defense game first released on PC in 2009, ported to mobile devices and Xbox 360 in 2010, then brought to Playstation 3 in 2011 and PlayStation Vita in 2012. Amidst all of that, a version of the game was released on Nintendo DS in 2011. This version had some good and bad qualities to it – on the one hand, it perfectly retained the gameplay of the original, and arguably the touchscreen is the absolute best way to play this game. On the other hand, the graphics and sound were necessarily scaled down to fit on Nintendo’s underpowered platform, resulting in a presentation that was inferior to other versions of the game.

Then, just a few months later in 2011, a version of the Nintendo DS version of the game was released on the DSiWare service, with this game later being grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop, where it is still available (at least until the Nintendo 3DS eShop closes within the next year). This version strips out a lot of the features and content of the full-release Nintendo DS game, while still retaining the core gameplay experience. Specifically, the DSiWare and Nintendo 3DS version of the game loses the DS version’s multiplayer play, its Puzzle mode, and its Survival mode, though it does add a new minigame, Zombie Trap.

Those more used to the console and PC versions of the game may be set aback by the presentation here. The cartoony, clear visuals of those versions have been replaced with pixellated art with choppy animations and surprisingly there’s even a fair bit of slowdown here. What’s more, the quality of the mosaic is greatly reduced, with what almost seems like chiptune versions of the original game’s excellent synthesized soundtrack. At the very least this game retains the adorable voice clips of the zombies mumbling “brains”, though here it sounds heavily digitized. Frankly, I’m surprised at how compromised the presentation here is, given that we’re not talking about a super high-end game here.

Still, while this version of the game is lacking both in its content and presentation, the gameplay still absolutely shines through, and I would say it is arguably better here than any other platform except perhaps PC. The touchscreen controls here are absolutely perfect for the game, allowing players to quickly drag-and-drop plants to the positions they’re being located to, and it all feels so very natural. I feel like this is how this game was meant to control.

And of course, the core gameplay at the heart of this series still shines through, with this game being arguably the greatest “lane-based” Tower Defense game ever made. Players are given an increasingly excellent array of options of defensive and offensive plants to fit into their tableau, and must wisely select the ones most befitting the forecasted onslaught of enemies, taking into account the unique conditions of the level in question.

The game does a great job shaking this up too, with some levels forcing players to contend with a lack of energy due to nighttime, some requiring players to place lily pads on a pool so they have ground to build on, and so on. There are also plenty of fun and unusual minigames to mix things up, too.

It’s really unfortunate that we don’t have a version of Plants Vs. Zombies on Nintendo Switch (or any of PopCap’s amazing pre-Electronic Arts games, for that matter), and as a result, Nintendo fans’ best way to play the game is still arguably on the Nintendo DS, a somewhat compromised experience. The DSiWare and Nintendo 3DS version of the game still retains the excellent core gameplay of the original, but this cuts back even more of the already-limited Nintendo DS version. If you’re looking for a great way to play this game on a portable device, you should know that this is still a fantastic must-play game, and it plays wonderfully here, even despite all of the cutbacks, and the $8 price tag makes it easier to be forgiving of those cutbacks. It’s just a shame this game wasn’t given the chance to truly shine, and that this version had to be compromised at all.

tl;dr – Plants Vs. Zombies is a truly great Tower Defense game, and the controls and core gameplay are as good here as they have ever been. Unfortunately, the presentation really suffered in the trip to Nintendo’s handheld, and it’s really unfortunate how so much content was stripped away for the DSiWare and Nintendo 3DS version of the game. This is still an amazing game that’s well worth playing, and definitely worth the $8 price tag, but it’s far from an ideal way to play it.

Grade: B+

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