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Plants vs. Zombies (PC)
by jasminesarah
I am by no means a Gamer, but every once in a while I develop an addiction to one game or another, back in days of yore it was Prima Materia, and later Snood. Casual games, as my son sneeringly comments. Anyway, I can't say that I was desperate to play Plants Vs Zombies, as the concept sounded a bit silly to me, but when I was finally ... enticed it turned out to be the most addictive yet.
The Scene: You are defending your home against a seemingly never ending wave of ingenious zombies who are determined to make it across your lawn, into the house, and to eat your brains. Thankfully, you are aided by friendly and helpful plants in your garden. Each plant has a different usage - whether defence or attack, and your choice of which plants to use in the garden will determine whether or not you are successful in defending your brain.
The game play builds up very slowly, with a very shallow learning curve, making this game suitable for anyone with little experience in gaming. The plants are introduced one by one, as are different types of zombies with different skills of their own. There are occasional visits from your neighbour, Crazy Dave, who will provide tips, or introduce mini games.
Unlike most Zombie genre games and films, this is not in the least scary. It is cute and funny and although it has a 12 rating it would be hard to take the light hearted eating of brains seriously enough to want to ban a younger child from playing it.
This game is widely available for around a fiver and has hours and hours of play, once you finish the main game there are lots of extras to unlock, and some of these are life-threateningly addictive!
Update- I am still addicted to this game!
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Plants vs. Zombies (PC)
by pixie23
Brraaainnnns!!
That was my little cousin's reaction after playing PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies. Think he has been zombiefied by the game... like me.
Plants vs. Zombies is an extremely addictive tower defence game, with a well balanced "cutesy" factor... but not to the point where you feel like gagging. ...
- Gameplay -
The objective of the game is simple.
1) There's zombies on your lawn, and wanting to eat your brain.
2) You want to kill the zombies.
3) How do you do that? .... Flower power! ... More like plant power.
To protect the zombies from entering your home, you plant a varierty of plant to act as a line of defense such as pods and watermelon. Each round you get to choose and pick the plants you want to be part of your defense team, and get a sneak peek on the road, what type of nasty zombies you will be against.
How to grow the plants that you want? Lots of sunshine. The more powerful plant requires more sunshine. Sunshine from the sky is not enough to grow all the plants that you want. So you will need to grow sunflowers to get them. But be wise about the planting, as the seeds take time to recharge and you only have that much space to grow your crops. You'll get it once you start playing the game. Once you get some money from the game, you can visit Crazy Dave and buy some interesting add-ons to your game.
The game continues into night mode, on the roof mode, with swimming pool mode, foggy night mode etc, where you get to meet more zombies and use more plants in your games.
And after finishing every mode... there is much more to do!! You can play the mini games to test your skills, tend to your Zen Garden, visit the Tree of Wisdom, which will gives you plenty of surprises to spice up your zombies. The mini games itself are very entertaining. If you think that's about it... there's still a never ending survival mode... (I am currently at >500 rounds), that is well... as interesting itself!
- Verdict -
The music is excellent (sings: "There's a zombie on your lawn"). The graphics are high quality. The plants are really cute and the zombies are funny.
Ah... makes me want to continue my never ending survival mode.
- Lyrics to the music -
There's a zombie on your lawn
There's a zombie on your lawn
There's a zombie on your lawn
We don't want zombies on the lawn
I know your type: tall, dark, and dead
You want to bite all the petals off of my head
And then eat the brains of
the one who planted me here
I'm just a sunflower but see
me power an entire infantry
You like the taste of brains
we don't like zombies
I used to play football
Road cones protect my head
I have a screen-door shield
We are the undead
Maybe it's time to reevaluate
I know you have a lot of food on your plate
Brains are quite rich in cholesterol
You're dead so it doesn't matter,
Instead we'll use this solar power
to make a lawn defense at any hour
I like the tricycle
There's butter on my head
I'm gonna eat your brains
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Lego Island Xtreme Stunts (PC)
by DavyMichelle
Lego Island Xtreme Stunts for the PC is a reasonable little game that will appeal to Lego fans of between about 9yrs and 12yrs above anyone else. It's not very widely available anymore as it's an older PC game meant for use on Win 98, Win ME or Win XP. If you want to buy a copy, you're looking at paying around £5 if you find the right ... retailer. In my opinion, that is the most that this game is worth considering the better, more modern Lego games that are out in the shops these days.
This game is fairly easy to get installed, but working out how to play it takes a little bit longer. The idea of the game is that you're a little Lego man who is performing stunts as part of a Hollywood film or similar. You have to work out what it is that the game wants you to do first and foremost, and that took us a good few minutes to figure out the first time we played this game!
Then you have to use your controls to perform the best stunts possible, which is really something that the grandson is just not old enough, or imaginative enough, to do anyway. When you do strike the right chords, the stunts are good fun to watch, and the standard of the graphics is really very good considering the age of this game. It's striking those right chords that's a bit beyond us though. We also found that both times when we tried to play this, our PC froze every so often for a second or so. It doesn't sound like much but it really does disrupt play after a while.
For an older child of say 9yrs or more, this game might be an enjoyable addition to their collection - especially if they're mad about Lego and generally quite good with computer games. It's definitely not for young or amateur gamers though, and it's not been a big hit with us at all. If you think it might be for you though, it's available on the PS2 as well as the PC.
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