Plants vs. Zombies on The Lawn

Plants vs. Zombies Google Play Promo.

When I pick a title for these Hall Tales "articles", my choice is pretty random. I might just start thinking about specific game for whatever reason and then decide to unload my mind by redirecting it towards writing. This is a great way to do this type of thing, but something was bothering me. I think there might be more examples, but I'll mention my Dungeon Siege & Ken's Labyrinth's posts specifically: just as I was writing them, I discovered that I "barely" missed out on their anniversary.

I know that this might be a weird thing to be bothered with, but I can't help myself. So I wanted to "make up" for it by releasing something just at the right moment. Which resulted in this perfect opportunity to talk about original Plants vs. Zombies that was released on May 5th, 2009. 14 years ago! Even though it's technically a PC game first and foremost since it was first released for Windows & Mac, I think many people out there (myself included) are often viewing it as mobile title. The idea of talking about games for various platforms is appealing to me, so I'm rolling with it.

Vegetable Defense.

This amazing game was created by a small team within PopCap Games, but initial idea and foundation of Plants vs. Zombies were created by game designer George Fan. Many articles from gaming media (for example, this one from Ars Technica) mention how one of the key inspirations for George came from Warcraft 3 and its Tower Defense maps... Well, I guess I just can't escape this game! To be fair, that genre was very popular at the time. Anyway, he was wondering why enemies just preferred to ignore all these towers that are placed around their path and keep attacking them. And that's how we got familiar 5-6 lanes.

Another interesting thing about Plants vs. Zombies' development is how it started off as a sequel to Insaniquarium, created by Fan and artist Tysen Henderson as Flying Bear Entertainment. Originally released for free, Flying Bear worked on a couple of new versions of the game with PopCap Games on board as their publisher. While two games are fairly different, I think it's fair to say that the original Plants vs. Zombies still have some similarities with Insaniquarium. Taking a quick at the latter is enough to realize that both games were created by the same person and there's nothing wrong with that.

Sunny Adventures.

Unlike other "articles" of this kind, I actually played a lot of Plants vs. Zombies back in my day. There was an online version for browsers that was based on Adobe Flash, but the vast majority of my experience with the game definitely comes from Android ports of the game: be it me getting to play it on my friend's phone at school or using my own device to check out recent free release for old times' sake. There's also a questline in World of Warcraft since Cataclysm expansion centered around a mini-game that directly copies Plants vs. Zombies. I really enjoyed that one, and it came with Sunflower pet! George Fan actually worked on Diablo 3 for a couple of years and left Blizzard to create Plants vs. Zombies.

No matter what version or parody it is, I was always successful at defending the house from hordes of zombies. Honestly, it's pretty hard to not be good at Plants vs. Zombies as this game is pretty damn easy. It's all about clever plant placement and getting as much sun as possible. You can easily complete pretty much every level with 2-3 lanes of Sunflowers, its twin twins or Sun-shroovms, so you can use other plants you've picked or ended up having as your options. Each stage is fairly easy to manage, but I'll call out the Fog as my least favorite one. Or more like "the one I find the most challenging personally".

Finished Level 5-7 Screenshot. Taken from MobyGames.

I often find myself struggling to write about games I've actually played, but in this case there's really not much to it than that. Get familiar with the game and then everything just clicks. At least for me, but I really don't think there's anything special for it and everyone manages to master the game in their own way. That's one many things that make Plants vs. Zombies such an enjoyable game. Once I had all plants unlocked, I usually found myself relying on these powerful and proven pals in both Adventure & Survival modes:

• Sunflower & Twin Sunflower.

• Kernel-pult & Cob Cannon.

• Wall-nut or Tall-nut.

• Starfruit.

• Melon-pult & Winter Melon.

• Pumpkin.

There're many great plants in Plants vs. Zombies like Potato Mine and Garlic, but there are usually the once I recall ending up using once I completely take over my Pool in Survival: Endless in particular. You can change your selection of plants between rounds, which allows you to change your strategy depending on specific wave or whatever you plan next. I really liked this last level of Survival mode since it lets you enjoy the gameplay of Plants vs. Zombies for a long period of time, letting you have fun with all sorts of tactics. Survival mode is great as a whole, but the Endless is where it truly shines.

Crazy Trunk.

Simple gameplay, gorgeous artstyle and pleasant soundtrack aren't the only reasons why Plants vs. Zombies is a timeless game. George Fan and other developers at PopCap Games made sure to include a lot of content on top of Adventure mode to keep players busy once they're finished with the main game. Tod Semple, the programmer of Plants vs. Zombies, worked on concepts that would be used in Puzzle & Mini-Games modes. Since PopCap took their time to develop the game over the course of three and a half years, it allowed them to include so many unique levels for them.

While I love stuff like Wall-nut Bowling, Vasebreaker and Last Stand, I actually haven't really spend a lot of time in aforemention modes. I'm just more into Adventure and Survival. If I had to pick some other mode, my choose would probably fall on I, Zombie. Even though you fight against cardboard version of plants and still use sun for some reason, summoning zombies is a neat novelty... Wait, there's a Versus mode for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo DS versions where zombie player actually uses brains as a resource? The idea of ports having some exclusive content is obviously, but I had no idea about it!

There's also Zen Garden where you're taking gear of the plants, but I never went too far with it. Even though it's really important to use any opportunity to get in-game money, so you can purchase everything that Crazy Dave has to offer in his Twiddydinkies shop: extra seed slots, lawn mower equivalents for Pool and Roof, new plants and, most importantly, Wall-nut First Aid. That feature is so useful that it honestly could've been a quality-of-life feature. Also don't forget about all those in-game achievements and I didn't knew that Peking Express is excluse to mobile versions.

Conclusion.

I thought that I knew pretty much everything about Plants vs. Zombies aside from its actual development story, but the last couple of paragraphs really show that it's not the case. This game was a major success on PC, and it was ported on pretty much every current platform at the time. Console ports include aforementioned Versus and Co-op modes. Nintendo DS version has cute & chunky look going for it. While Game of Year Edition wasn't updated to have a proper widescreen mode, PvZWidescreen can take care of that.

You can pay for PC version of Plants vs. Zombies, but its current Android & iOS iteration is a freeware. Thankfully, it's just filled with ads and they haven't messed with in-game money, Zen Garden and Crazy Dave's Twiddydinkies in order to add in microtransactions. Ads can be annoying, but you can always just turn off Internet connection on your mobile device to solve that issue. No matter what version of Plants vs. Zombies you pick, I would say there's no wrong option. Each of them might have some exclusive features, but the base game on itself is perfect and can be enjoyed with a mouse, gamepad and/or touch screen.

Getting some sort of "Definitive Edition" that combines all versions of Plants vs. Zombies into one would've been pretty awesome though. Just imagine having this re-release suddenly drop for 15th anniversary of the franchise on PC, consoles and mobile. PopCap Games were part of Electoric Arts for almost twelve years at this point. If Command & Conquer Remasetered Collection is a thing, perhaps there's a chance for original Plants vs. Zombies to become a center of attention once again.

After the success of the original title, Plants vs. Zombies franchise with a direct sequel and multiple spin-offs. Despite this, Plants vs. Zombies 2 came out only on mobile plantforms and never got a release on PC and/or console. I actually played the sequel for quite some time back when it released (2013-2014) and would like to write an "article" about it as well, but I think that story is best saved for another time. I know there's also Plants vs. Zombies 3, but who knows if it actually sees the light of day.