Family Gaming 101: Plants vs Zombies

Some family gaming greats are happy accidents, while others have resulted from canny development decisions. Plants vs. Zombies is a little of both. It takes the core gameplay of tower defence and gives it a friendly face.

Well, that’s what it seems like before you play it. Spend a little time with it though and you soon realise there is more going on here than meets the eye. This isn’t a dumbed down version of the format, if anything the complexity has been turned up.

There’s a greater variety of weapons than in any other Tower Defence game I’ve played. But here, weapons translate into all sorts of different plant and fungi each with their own firing rate, damage and special abilities.

This may sound a little too much for younger players to get their heads around, but I’ve been surprised just how well my kids (3, 6 and 8) have taken to it. Even the youngest clearly understands the basic strategy and has developed his own favourite combination of organic weaponry to thwart the plodding zombie hoards — you can only take a select few with you into each level.

Source: The Telegraph News