Plants Vs. Zombies is secretly one of the most influential games of all time. Coming from what was at the time the undisputed king of casual games, studio PopCap Games, it introduced millions (and I do mean millions – the Android port alone has about five hundred million downloads) of gamers to the tower defense genre without them even realizing it. Its easy-to-understand gameplay, combined with a simplistic cartoon art style that meant it could run on pretty much any computer, made it extremely accessible, even more so when the smartphone versions rolled out and it became an early hit of mobile gaming.
Sixteen years later, the first game remains a classic, but it’s not the most polished title out there anymore. The mobile versions are diluted with ads, the Windows version is outdated, and the console versions originally came out during the seventh generation (meaning only the Xbox 360 release is still playable on a modern platform). It’s time for a comeback – and Replanted is positioning itself well to take up that shovel.
What’s New in Plants Vs. Zombies: Replanted?
The game is a full remaster of the original title, including the Adventure mode that gets progressively more complex and difficult over its fifty levels, and couch co-op, enabling you and a friend to fight off the undead menace together. In my demo session, I teamed up with a member of the game’s team where I handled our basic defenses and left more specialty planting up to him, and had an absolute blast – or, well, he was the one planting mines, so he was doing the blasting, but the point is it was a lot of fun.
Gameplay Experience and Modes
Adventure feels the same as ever, a stage-based affair that offers a well-planned difficulty ramp, adding both new plants to your arsenal and more threatening zombies to shamble towards them. Co-op gives you and your partner each a more limited loadout, but this is easily made up for by the power to multitask, and you’ll have to communicate in order to gather sunlight together to keep your garden growing. Even with analog sticks, it feels natural, helped by the game’s simple control scheme.
The new modes include “Cloudy Day”, essentially a tactical mode with finite sunlight for players to spend in order to puzzle out the demise of the zombies, and “Rest in Peace”, a permadeath challenge that will send players back to the beginning if the horde should defeat them. This release will also include the original’s classic minigames, and a head-to-head multiplayer mode that gives player two the chance to summon the dead and defeat the plants themselves.
Exceptional Value Proposition
The biggest win, though, is the game’s value proposition. All of this is available for the same $19.99 as the original game cost in 2009, a budget-friendly price tag that positions this remaster as an easy pickup compared to many of the other games coming this fall, and a bit of an unexpected win given that the last few titles in this series retailed for $40 apiece at launch.
Plants vs Zombies: Replanted isn’t looking to take the series anywhere new, but it’s definitely looking to be the absolute best version of one of gaming’s modern classics. The high-definition remaster job and new modes might already be enough to entice brand-new players or series veterans to pick it up, but its player-first price tag could be the thing to really seal the deal. We’ll find out when it sprouts next month.
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted launches for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series and Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam on October 23.
