And now it’s on the iPhone. Trading towers and cannons for stalks and stems, Plants Vs. Zombies gives the player a substantial arsenal of deadly plants, funghi, seeds and roots to sow upon their yards, protecting the inhabitants of a residential home from a similarly wide variety of shuffling, brains hungry zombies. It does so with familiar tower defence mechanics and barely-there resource management; and it does it with highly polished charm.

Despite one major shortcoming, Plants Vs. Zombies transition to the iPhone is simply outstanding.

Loved

The Best Porch defence $US2.99 Can Buy: Plants Vs. Zombies offers an incredible amount of value for its price, with an extended Adventure mode, quick play and a selection of challenging Achievements that will make some levels worth revisiting. PvZ packs in an incredible number of units on both sides of the undead-vegetation war, layering that with gorgeous animation, catchy tunes and a damn fine sense of humor. If you’re going to buy one tower defence genre game for your iPhone or iPod Touch, zombies included or not, this is the biggest bang for your buck.

Tutorials Disguised As Mini-games: When many of the game’s levels throw a new zombie type (there are 26 total), a new plant type (49 of ‘em) or some a new twist on the playfield (some levels occur at night, some feature a backyard pool, some are drenched in fog), the game’s infrequent mini-game modes that shun resource management and feed randomized plants help players experiment with new units, new gameplay tactics and they help switch up the action. There are still a handful of units I felt reliant upon, like the sun-emitting Sunflowers and floating Lily Pads for pool levels, but it was during these mini-games that I understood the value of the defensive Tall-nuts and scorching Jalapenos.

Hated

Too Many Peas For 3G: The iPhone port of Plants Vs. Zombies features some horrendous slowdown. That’s particularly troublesome when you unlock the triple shot Shooter plant and the zombie hordes start to get thick. On my 3G iPhone, the game reaches near unplayable status, even though the touchscreen controls perform admirably under pressure. I can’t speak to its performance on a later model iPhone or iPod Touch, but the game becomes an ugly slideshow near the end of many rounds. The initial load time also kind of sucks.

Despite it’s technical issues, purely framerate related, as the game is easy to control and registers touchscreen taps perfectly, Plants Vs. Zombies should really be installed on every iPhone and iPod Touch. The game’s style of tower defence, which may appear to be simple at first but shows its complexity soon enough, is highly addictive. Just like the original, which we also loved, the iPhone port of Plants Vs. Zombies features glorious tower defence gameplay with some of PopCap’s most enjoyable presentation to date.

Plants Vs. Zombies was developed and published by PopCap Games for the iPhone on February 15. Retails for $US2.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through adventure mode, found some Chinese zombies.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The game is packed with 50 levels in Adventure mode and includes 26 different kinds of zombies. The port features 13 achievements for the iPhone/iPod Touch. It also features a new vibration option.

Plants vs. Zombies is priced at US$2.99.

Defend Your Honor’s plot is utter nonsense – as you might reasonably expect from the guy who made the wonderful Upgrade Complete parody – but the tower defence mechanics are solid and swiftly addictive.

And I love the dwarves.

Defend Your Honor [Armor Games]

According to the company’s Facebook page, however, the game will be out on Apple’s handheld in late January. So, around a month! Should be well worth the wait, as about the only thing better than PvZ is PvZ that you can carry in your pocket.

[PopCap @ Facebook]

The game has players use coins to build a variety of towers that do things like shoot snowballs, cherry balls, ice and pee-snowballs at incoming enemies like old people, Mongolians and terrorists. Killing baddies causes them to exploded into bits and sometimes shoot out coins which can then be used to buy more towers, build walls or upgrade.

So let’s go tower defence play or let’s not?

Loved
Dude, It’s South Park: Before playing Let’s Go Tower Defense Play!, I thought this game had two things it needed to do: One is recapture the show. And it does. Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! does a solid job of creating the South Park world, characters and art style. There are unlockable clips, which for most players will be stuff they’ve seen before. Still, it’s a nice addition for an XBLA title. What about the second part, you ask? Well, read on below…

Let’s Go Tower Defense Play: Sure, it doesn’t reinvent the tower defence game, it doesn’t have to. Rather the second thing this title needed to do, I thought, was deliver a solid tower defence game experience. It does.

Hated
Shut Up Fat Boy: South Park is a funny show, it makes me laugh. Though, when you’re playing through a stage for the umpteenth time and you’re hearing the same sound clip for the umpteenth time, the humour, sadly, wears thin.

Save Points: One of the strong points for XBLA games is that they’re shorter than package titles. They are pick up and play games — better yet, play and put down games. Let’s Tower Defense Play! has some challenging stages that gobbled up a fair bit of this reviewer’s time. That’s fine, it’s value for money. However, it would be nice if players could save their gave between areas in the same level, instead of completing one part of the level and having to play through the entire level to get the stage point. It ends up being a time sink. In the game’s defence, the developers have made it possible to skip harder challenges.

After seeing what has been done with previous South Park games, my expectations for South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play were low, exceedingly so. The title was a pleasant surprise with a fair amount of unlockable items and characters and just enough replay grist. Developer Doublesix, who recently released zombie shooter Burn Zombie Burn! bring a workman quality to the game, which never ends up feeling like South Park characters have simply been slapped on a tower defence game.

South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play was developed by Doublesix and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox LIVE Arcade. Released on October 7, the game is priced at 800 Microsoft Points for the PlayStation 3, released on September 22 in North America. The game was provided to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through all levels, tested online and challenge mode.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

It’s a tower defence game, in essence. Zombies stagger across the garden towards your house. Plants act as turrets while collecting energy from the sun allows you to build more plant-turrets.

Like most tower defence games, it’s ridiculously simple yet caters for just enough strategy to be worthwhile and highly addictive.

Plants Vs Zombies [Popcap]

What Is It?
South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! is an October Xbox Live Arcade game developed by Double Six Games. It plays a lot like familiar tower defence games but with the added element of directly-controlled character-based attacks. Up to four players, linked online or offline, can control their choice of four characters from South Park, using them to build towers or directly throw white (or yellow) snowballs at an attacking the horde. That attacking horde, like all tower defence enemies, wants to cross the screen. Other games made that horde a bunch of spiders or aliens. South Park populates that horde with the TV series’ staple nemeses: Cows, ginger kids, woodland critters, hippies? I don’t want the show, people, but I believe those are some of the classic bad guys, yes?

What We Saw
I played a board set on a snowy sidewalk on a signature South Park street. I was Kenny for a bit. Then, yes, I let him get killed by mistake. So I took control of Cartman for the rest of the fight. A rep for the game controlled one of the other characters. We built towers, threw snowballs and stopped the pesky cows from reaching the right of the screen.

How Far Along Is It?The South Park game will be available on October 7 as a download through Xbox Live Arcade, which leads me to think it’s just about done.

What Needs Improvement?
Perfect Level Design: There are many recent tower defence games, and several superb ones. The king of them on consoles may be the PlayStation 3’s PixelJunk Monsters, a game that sets a standard of specific and delicately balanced level design. Each level feels distinct and artfully structured. South Park does not immediately prove that its levels have the same level of craft to its level designs. I don’t mean for this to be an unfair bit of scepticism. I’ve only played the game for five minutes. But, given the quality of games recently released in this genre, South Park’s levels will need to be very good to be satisfying in terms of gameplay.

What Should Stay The Same?
Character Offenses: I think it’s a good idea that characters can not just build towers that shoot at hippies but throw snowballs at them themselves. I think it should stay in there (of course it will — the game’s out in October). I’m a little concerned that being able to chuck snowballs could undermine the genre’s reliance on strategic deployment of towers. We’ll see. In the level of South Park I played, I didn’t just have the option to build a variety of cannons. I could run up to a cow and throw a snowball at them. Holding down an action button powered that snowball up so that it became yellow. So imagine a cow gets past all your towers? No problem. Chuck a snowball. Beyond that, each character has special moves. Cartman can execute a super move that makes him deal more damage. Kenny can cause enemies to drop money. Stan can heal the town, which otherwise takes damage if attackers have broken through to that right part of the screen.

More Lore: The game is full of unlockable characters, including Jimmy, Timmy and others a non-South-Park-watcher like me couldn’t recognise when I saw them in silhouette in one of the game’s menus. It also has more than 80 show clips that are pulled from the hit series. Those include a clip of one of the South Park kids masturbating his dog. A clip called Proper Condom Use. From Episode 307. Hmm…should I watch this show?

Final Thoughts
I had trouble judging how good the gameplay of South Park Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! will be, but it looked like the game will offer a lot of fan service to the series’ faithful. It’s ribald and comprehensive. The four-player offline and online support is promising too. Check it out in early October when the demo and full game hit the Xbox 360.

It’s due on September 2, and will be sold for the entirely reasonable price of 800 MSP ($10), especially when you consider that it includes some extra missions never before seen on the PC.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to celebrate with a bowl of raspberries…

There may be no scarier issue in gaming than the clash of creativity and commerce. There are a range of possible problems: A great game idea doesn’t get financial backing. A high price keeps a good game from selling. Or go back to Pac-Man or any other arcade classic. Witness a level of difficulty designed to ensure that you’d have to keep paying to keep playing.

Enter a game, My Life As A Darklord, that launched on day one with extra paid downloadable content. The game costs $US10 and, within two weeks, has more than $US50 worth of two-dollar and four-dollar purchasable add-ons — many of them designed to empower the player. When a game like that gets hard and the solution is just a “micro” payment away, it makes you wonder. It makes you mutter. And it makes it hard to just have fun.

Is there a dirty trick being played here on gamers? Who knows. There is the possibility. That stinks enough.

Loved
A Magnificent Structure: My Life As A Darklord is an inspired twist on tower defence games that can be interpreted as an even more inspired twist on Japanese role-playing games. The player assumes the role of a female darklord who wants to stop good guys from entering the base floor of her tower and climbing an interior ladder to the top floor. You stop the heroes by building floors and filling them with traps and monsters, balancing the budget of points you earn for defeating heroes with the expenses of leveling up your minions. Defeat a stream of 10-30 heroes and you win. Each floor battle lasts a set amount of time and looks like a slice of a battle in a classic 3D Japanese role-playing game. Sure Darklord is like a tower defence game, but it’s also a great display of how tedious line-dancing role-playing game battles can literally be stacked and automated; a testament that thinking about how to set up those battles is more interesting than manually controlling them. In this game, you only need to set them up. The rest just happens. Top-flight game design.

Hated
The FF-Ness: It’s cliche to complain about Final Fantasy cliches, but come on. Into a tower defence game they managed to stuff a protagonist with dad issues, an excessive amount of dialogue, an overly-long quest that evolved its gameplay style too slowly and a super-tough final boss battle that requires level-grinding to beat. None of that improved the game. Worst offence here was that there were more than 40 quest levels, most of them indistinguishable from each other, a far cry from the less numerous but more distinctly laid out levels of PlayStation 3 downloadable tower defence game PixelJunk Monsters.

That Sneaking Feeling: I could have ignored the fact that a ton of downloadable add-ons were available for the game, but I couldn’t shake my suspicions. Darklord gets hard. And really strong spells and units are accessible for just a couple of extra bucks. That makes me uncomfortable. Which were held out from the base game and why? I struggled to finish the game without making extra purchases, but was the game hard because Square-Enix thought that would make it more fun? Or was it hard because that would make me spend extra?

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A Darklord is yet another WiiWare original that was a lot of fun to play. But my enjoyment of its core design was marred by thematic and commercial issues. I spared myself the excess of buying the DLC. I wish Square-Enix could start sparing gamers the excess of maudlin plots and overwrought quests.

(Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A Darklord was developed and published by Square-Enix for the Nintendo Wii’s WiWare service on July 20. Retails for $US10 USD. Played through 48 quest levels — way too many of minimal variety.)

This is possibly the bloodiest game I’ve ever seen. Certainly the bloodiest Australian-made game I’ve seen.

Perth based studio Staring Man has just released the aptly named Pools of Blood for the iPhone. It’s a very literal take on the tower defence genre, handing you one central tower to defend from the orcs rushing in at all angles.

Metal band Karnivool, also from Perth, have supplied the soundtrack. And if that isn’t the perfect musical accompaniment to the sight of mashed orc flesh, I don’t know what is.

Pools of Blood [official site]