Plants vs. Zombies

Developer: PopCap Games

Price: $6.99 (HD) $2.99 (iPhone)

Hello Plants vs. Zombies. Goodbye several hours of my day.

Made by avatars of procrastination PopCap Geames (they made Bejewelled) Plants vs. Zombies is a simple, addictive and funny. Plants vs. Zombies is one of the best games I’ve played on the iOS system. I personally think it’s worth splashing out the extra cash for the HD version and playing it on iPad, but it looks, and runs, just fine on the iPhone.

Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defence game at heart, albeit a very very good one. The basic premise is that you are a cross between Doctor Frankenstein and an amateur gardening enthusiast and for some reason the corpses in the local cemetery have taken a dislike to you and your neighbour Crazy Dave.

As the moaning, rotting…er, sometimes sporty hordes descend upon your home you have to plant your way to safety. Sunflowers form the back bone of your defences, generating sunlight that you can use to put in the plant equivalent of fixed gun emplacements. You start out with pea shooters (literally) but quickly move up to everything from potato based land mines to carnivorous plants that chew zombies like bubblegum.

This image will soon make perfect sense to you.

The humor is key to the game, and a lot of Plants vs Zombies appeal is in the ever escalating levels of insanity that developer PopCap  Games is prepared to throw at you. Obviously this isn’t a gritty, real world based take on the zombie apocalypse; this is a game where you can go zombie bowling. This is a game where your back up anti-zombie plan is a lawnmower.

This is Crazy Dave’s world.

Mankind's last line of defense.

Plants vs. Zombies  has high replay value, unlockable zombie themed mini games.

The cartoon style of the game looks good on any screen, but it’s particularly good on a retina display (provided you get the HD version). I have had the game crash just the once in the entire time I’ve owned it.

There is a downside to the HD version in that it's not as complete as the normal version, however there seems to be something int he works to fix that with an update. At the moment the iPhone version will give you a Zen garden to relax in, and more enviroments to rip zombies up in. That said I found the iPhone version fiddly compared to the HD iteration. I think this may be one of those situations where personal preference comes into play.

This is one of the rare games you can try out for free online ahead of time and see if you like it. If you’d like to try it out before handing over your hard earned wampum then click this link to PopCap.

Then kiss your productivity goodbye.