Zombie-Fighting Strategies!

For something a bit different, I would like to focus upon the other thing upon which I waste my time: “Plants vs. Zombies”. For those of you who are clueless as to what this might be – very few of you I’m thinking – it’s a computer game where you plant all kinds of vegetation, each of which has its own specific means of inflicting mayhem, in order to repel advancing waves of ever more menacing undead shufflers, aka. zombies. I started playing this game awhile ago and was completely hooked. I’ve played the whole adventure through a couple of times and now have much of the tactical basics down pat. It’s a deceptively easy-looking game (enhanced by the cutesy characters) and you have to have cool nerves and strategic nous to win clear of an undead mauling. Explaining all of the technicalities would take weeks of blog updates so I would just like to focus on one of the mini-games that comes with the software and which are designed to hone your mad botanical combat skillz.

The mini-game in question is “ZomBotany”. This comes across as a standard frame of zombie-blasting but it has a twist: in this version, the zombies’ heads are replaced by two of the more useful plant types – an unholy blending of undead flesh and vegetable matter. In this iteration, the two types of zombies to be faced are a standard zombie with a Peashooter head and a standard zombie with a Wall-nut head. This means that one type of zombie shoots back at your plants, while the other is hugely resistant to your attacks. The Peashooter zombies are in the majority as well, forming a 4:1 ratio of encounters.

What this means in terms of strategy is that, whatever you plant, you are going to come under retaliatory fire. Your plants are going to take damage and will need to be replaced frequently. As well, every now and then, a nut-headed walker is going to stroll through your defences largely unhindered. This is bad, but not insurmountable. All you need to do is to select plants that can’t be hit by zombie artillery and direct the undead horde where you want it to go, rather than letting it choose its own path. You need to select the following plants at the start of the game:

As you can see, you need to have a handful of ‘one-shot killers’ which are useful in establishing your floral emplacement – the Potato Mine, the Squash and the Jalapeño. It goes without saying that you need Sunflowers – you can’t just rely on the energy streaming down from above! The two backbones to this strategy however are the Garlic bulb and the Spikeweed (along with its power-up version, the Spikerock). For return-fire, your best bet is the Threepeater and the Snow Pea: the Threepeater can fire on the enemy without being in their line of fire, and the Snow Pea makes your Spikeweed much more effective, although you are going to have to replace them a lot. For the last slot, take the Twin Sunflower – by the end of this engagement you will need all the sun you can get!

The game teaches you to plant all of your vegetable friends in neat vertical columns. This is something that becomes heavily inculcated in the new player, however for this mini-game, you need to break your conditioning. For this battle, you want to create ‘kill zones’ into which you will direct the undead so that you can pick them off. The best way to do this is to plant Garlic. A Garlic bulb at the start of a row will divert the oncoming zombie to the row immediately above or below the garlic-protected row. If you plant Garlic at the start of the top row, at the start of the middle row, and at the start of the bottom row, then immediately, all of the walkers have no choice but to shuffle into the two remaining rows: these are your killing fields. You will need to “double Garlic” your rows, that is plant two Garlic bulbs at the start of these rows, because zombies eventually chew past the Garlic and win free of the blockades. Double-Garlic-ing gives you time to concentrate on other aspects of the battle. Remember though, that you will need to constantly replace your Garlic; fail to do so, and the zombies will swarm!

Reserve the top and bottom rows for Sunflowers and evolve them into double-headed hybrids as the option becomes available. The Garlic will keep them safe by absorbing most of the enemy Peashooter fire and by diverting the zombies away. Leave the other end of the row clear of plants at the beginning: when it becomes available, plant a Snow Pea in the most left-hand square of these three rows. This means that any zombies who munch your Garlic will be frozen for their trouble. The middle row has another function: it too, needs two Garlics at the right-hand end, and a Snow Pea to the extreme left, but your goal here is to fill this lane with Threepeaters, working left to right. The benefit of the Threepeater is that it can cover all the killing field lanes as well as pinging any zombies who nibble its protective Garlic, without taking any return fire. Cunning, huh?

That leaves us with the killing fields. Plant these lanes entirely with Spikeweed except for the far left squares at each end. At the beginning of the encounter, you will need to plant Potato Mines on the last (left-most) square of these lanes: these guys represent your last line of defense before the lawnmowers go into action. At the start of the action, you will be using the Squash and – later – the Jalapeño to eliminate pesky undead strays who get too close to your house, but by the end, very few zombies will make it even halfway. Just remember to place your Squash right in front of the zombies that you want to take out – if you put them down too far away, the Peashooter zombie will shoot them up before they have a chance to go to work. In front of the Potato Mines, plant a Snow Pea: these guys will take a pounding and will have to be replaced regularly, but they will make your “dance floor” that much more effective.

What’s a “dance floor”, I hear you ask? Simply put, it’s a thoroughfare covered in Spikeweed over which zombies have no other choice but to pass. I love Spikeweed – zombies can’t touch it and they kill themselves by walking on it. No muss, no fuss. Fill the rest of these lanes with the stuff and watch the walkers fall to pieces. When the option becomes available, upgrade your ‘Weed to Spikerocks and Bob’s the relative of your choice. Remember though: at the start of this mini-game, zombies cannot walk over two complete Spikeweed squares; soon however, they toughen up and it will take three squares to do them in. No Peashooter zombie can endure four Spikeweed squares. The Wall-nut Zombies are a different issue.

No matter how much Spikeweed you lay down, a Wall-nut zombie will make it all the way to your Potato Mine and blow up. You need to retaliate against them by upgrading your Spikeweed, planting Snow Peas and then planting Threepeaters. When frozen, zombies take longer to move off the Spikeweed, making it more effective, and the more projectiles you throw at these Wall-nut guys, the more of their armour you destroy. Just be prepared, in the game’s initial stages, to rely on your Squash and Jalapeño to take these guys down if they get too close for comfort.

Basically, your lawn should look like this:

If you upgrade your Spikeweed starting from the right-hand end of the lawn, you eliminate the shooter zombies more quickly: this lessens the devastation to your plants. As you can see, the Garlic bulb at I5 has been nibbled upon: they develop less of a sunny disposition as they wear out, so keep an eye on them and be ready to use the shovel to replace them (or just plant more when they’re completely eaten; personally, I try to remove and replace them rather than sending them to the Big Compost Bin in the Sky, but that’s just me). The Snow Peas at B2 and B4 are also going to take some punishment and will need to be replaced regularly. A variation you can try is to do without Snow Peas entirely and select the Tall-nut instead, planting those at these two locations: it’s amusing to watch zombies being chewed apart by Spikeweed while trying to tunnel through a stoic Tall-nut.

This is a sure-fire way to survive this evil iteration of the standard game. After trying this, you will think quite differently about the humble Garlic in future!