Flower power in your pocket

I cannot stand writing articles. There, I said it.

You know why I detest penning these things? It is because once a week I have to get off my lazy behind, I have to stop playing games and I have to churn out something for you lot to read. In general, the more I enjoy a game the more hate-filled I become when I have to shut it down and begrudgingly open up Word. I say this not to make you feel sorry for me, but for you to understand how high my blood pressure rose when I realised I had to stop playing Plants vs. Zombies on the Nintendo DS.

Plants vs. Zombies is a sickeningly cute tower defence game made by PopCap, a company infamous for pumping out games as relentlessly addictive as most illegal psycho-stimulants, and PvZ is no exception to this rule. If you had not guessed already, the game revolves around both plants and zombies (it is a no brainer really). Zombies are invading your back garden/pool/roof, and all you have to save your brain from becoming a gourmet zombie dinner is a bunch of thoroughly lethal plants and fungi.

Variety is the spice of life, and PvZ embraces this with open arms – there are 49 different plants at your disposal, some vital, some so-so, and some that only have an effect on one or two of the 29 different zombie types, who are also unique in their attacks and methods of locomotion. Ever wanted to see a zombie bobsleigh team or Gatling gun peashooter? If not, stay away from PvZ.

The game never overwhelms you though, as plants (and to a lesser extent zombies) are introduced to you one at a time after every successful level completed in adventure mode. In this way you never feel particularly inundated with excessive choice, but it does mean that adventure mode never feels particularly challenging, unless you are feeling rather brain dead.

On top of all that you fight in different environments. Zombies are nothing if not ingenious, and whilst they start attacking your back garden during the day, things quickly change: Soon they are attacking at night and under the cover of fog, which forces you to change to night time fungi to defend your home. When they make plans to attack your pool, be prepared to roll out the aquatic arsenal. To top it all off, your roof is the final staging ground for their onslaught, necessitating the use of plants that launch rounds of corn, cabbage and melon. I wish I could dream this stuff up.

I bought the game when it originally came out on the PC way back in 2009, and after 120 hours of play since then (almost not all at once) I was of course a little hesitant to try it out on the DS. Would the controls hold up? Would it run as smoothly and look as good? Would my eyes be rooted to the screen?

Six hours in, I think it is safe to say that the DS version of PvZ is not destined for an early grave. Obviously the DS is limited in its technological capabilities, but PvZ holds its own reasonably well. The touch screen is put to good use, and the stylus control over the killer members of the Plantae kingdom is precise and natural, which is saying something coming from someone so used to mouse control on the PC version.

The graphics, whilst not being comparable to that of other platform versions, still look good-ish. The various varieties of pernicious plants and uncouth undead are easily told apart, something that has to be admired in a game with so many different towers and attackers besieging your brain.

That being said, the DS version throws up a few niggling issues that cannot really be ignored. The top screen does not do much at all, and considering how cluttered the touch screen can potentially get in the later stages of the game it would have been useful to have it serve some other purpose beyond displaying cute zombie animations. It also does not run quite as smoothly as it did when I tried it some time back on an iPhone, which is rather annoying considering the fact that the DS version of the game costs even more than that of the iPhone version. Not that I paid for the game of course - I get this stuff for free, suckers!

There is also a versus mode – but not on-line – mode in which you can play with a friend, in which one controls the plant defence, and the other takes the role of necromancer and summons zombies from graves to attack his or her opponent. Because none of my friends play PvZ/own a DS/actually exist I never got a chance to try this mode out, but it looks like it could be fun for a good few rounds.

Even if you ignore versus mode completely there is still a wealth of other games available including adventure mode, twenty-four mini-games, two sets of puzzle challenges, survival mode and the Zen Garden. Adventure mode is the first and only game available at the start, and progress through it will unlock more plants and different modes.

The mini-games are what they say on the tin, a range of short challenges that break away from the regular flow of the game. In one rather out of place game you have to shout into the DS to keep plants awake, which caused an awful ruckus when I tried to play it in the library. You would not have thought librarians could be quite so vicious...

Puzzle mode flexes your grey matter, requiring you to solve puzzles with limited resources available, i.e. Sun power and plants. Survival mode requires you to survive 5 (normal) or 10 (hard) successive hoards of the undead with the same set-up, whilst survival endless takes it a step further, pitting you against a never-ending stream of ravenous reanimated cadavers. The current record seems to be 1,600+ waves, but I seriously would not recommend trying to emulate this feat. You have got revision to do, lazy.

The Zen Garden is less of a game mode than a relaxation one. In it plants that ‘drop’ during all the other modes will locate here, and you can spend as little or as much time as you want attending to them. In return they drop coins when they are watered and ‘cared for’ properly. It is not the most thrilling mode I grant you, but it is a sweet little extra.

Plants vs. Zombies is most certainly worth your money if you have yet to play it, but I would be wary about purchasing it on the DS if you have an iGadget in your possession. The iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch versions of the game, though lacking the DS’s extra mini-games, run a Hell of a lot smoother and look a hell of a lot sexier to boot. At the end of the day, Plants vs. Zombies is like a bikini model – it is amazing however you look at it, but a bit of oil to smoothen it up makes it even better. You can do without the drool though, for this game.

Plants vs. Zombies DS is available now from PopCap Games for all Nintendo DS family consoles.