After having completed most of the content in Plants vs Zombies, I’m still playing the game. As a tribute, I thought I’d take this opportunity to detail my five most favoritest plants and my five most hated zombies.
Firstly, the pumpkin. It’s far more expensive than the wall-nut, and has primarily the same effect. However, the pumpkin is placed directly on top of one of your plants, and it protects that plant while blocking zombies’ path. It also lets you fit more stuff into less space.
Next, the sun shroom. I don’t even use regular sunflowers at night. It’s true that sun shrooms only produce tiny units of sun for the first few minutes, but it’s not too long before they produce just as well as a sunflower, and they cost a quarter of what a sunflower does.
The hypno shroom is one groovy plant. Usually when a zombie eats your plant, you just lose the plant. But the hypno shroom is there to be eaten. The mushroom sends the zombie on such a crazy trip that it turns and tries to eat the other zombies’ brains. Best used on bucket-head zombies and football zombies.
When you’re looking for sheer damage, the Gatling pea is hard to beat. Sure, it’s expensive, but it fires four peas at a time. I use this one quite a lot.
And then there’s my beloved squash. There weren’t many levels in the game in which I didn’t use the squash. It’s a one-use plant, but as inexpensive as it is, and for what it does, it’s certainly worth it. And while a chomper eats a zombie whole and can be re-used, it only eats one at a time, and costs about triple what a squash does. I loves me some squash.
As powerful as some of this plants are, there are some badass zombies out there.
The snorkel zombie swims in your pool underwater where you can’t touch him. I hate this guy. Fortunately, he’s got to surface to eat plants, and this really is his only weakness. Planting lily pads in his way forces him to surface to munch on a near-worthless plant.
The Balloon zombie is even worse, as he’ll just fly right over all your plants. I hate this guy. Cacti can shoot him down, but they have to be planted in the correct lane. Thankfully, balloon zombies they only appear in your backyard at nighttime.
Next, the dreaded zomboni. The zomboni drives along, plowing down your plants, leaving in its wake an ice trail unfit for planting anything. Stupid zomboni. To add insult to injury, the zomboni is often followed by the Jamaican zombie bobsled team.
I think that Pogo zombies have eaten my brains more times than any other zombie. How I loathe them. They hop along very quickly, and just jump over all your plants. Tall nuts can stop them, and those magnet plants can steal their pogo sticks, but how many times you you actually use either of those plants?
Finally, Gargantaur. Or as I call him, the Master Blaster zombie. Right out of Thunderdome. It’s bad enough that he stops along, nearly invulnerable, and smashes your plants flat with one hit. But even worse, he throws the little imp on his back over three rows of plants and it proceeds to eat your sunflowers or whatever you’ve got planted back there. Stupid jerk.
Anyone else got some favorite plants or most-hated zombies that I missed?
For backyard missions, the Cat-tail (I think) upgrade for lily pads is very nice. It shoots the same kind of spikes as the Cactus, but can direct its shots in all directions (even backwards), so it’s like a little spike turret. Unfortunately, it’s a bit pricy, but even at 225 (or is it 325? I forget.) sunlight (plus the initial 25 sunlight for the lily pad) it’s still cheaper than planting a Cactus in every row.
The Chomper/Tall-Nut combo works nicely, but only if backed up by some decent firepower. I recommend laying down some of the tack strips (I don’t recall the name of the plant) leading up to the Tall-Nut as well; it tenderizes the zombie nicely, especially if you’ve got three of them laid down before the Tall-Nut.
Yeah – since I wrote this, I’ve discovered a couple more plants that I really like, and the Cat-tail is one. The gloom shroom is also awesome when you plant a row of them with garlic at the front. Zombies change lanes and walk right through a gloom shroom gauntlet. Make them eat through nuts on the way and none shall survive. Got pretty far on survival endless last night, but the stupid giga-gargantaurs ignore garlic and smash right past it.
The upgraded form of the tack strips (the spikerocks) take several hits for the Gargantaurs to destroy, which gives you time to blow them up with instants.
I’ve found that I actually prefer not to use magnet plants. They recharge too slowly and take up too much room. It’s possible to do enough damage with gloom shrooms plus slowing plants to destroy nearly anything even Gargantaurs (except ones on the same rows as your garlic, but that’s where you want to put the spikerocks to buy the time to nuke them with instants). For miners and imps, you just put something like, oh, another gloom shroom in the back. Also, pumpkin up the back rows.
To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I use this setup. Way more pumpkins than I need, but I’m a little paranoid. Only strictly need pumpkins for the first three columns on the left that aren’t on the pool (imp/miner protection), and the gloom shrooms behind the garlic. Also maybe for the winter melons in the front.
Corn cannons’re actually nice–they’re like reusable cherry bombs.