After nearly 16 and a half years of being one of the best games ever made, Plants vs. Zombies is back on modern platforms as Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted to hopefully shine in 2025. I have extensive history with the original, as it was the first purchase I made on Steam, logging over 80 hours on the game in about two months. I also checked out almost every other version of the game, and clocked in hundreds of more hours more across iOS, Android, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Vita, and DS editions. Each version of the game had interesting ways of adapting classic PvZ gameplay. Even the mobile game was good.
It’s unfortunate that the original Plants vs. Zombies, which we’ll refer to as PvZ in the review from here on, is the only good game in the main tower defense part of this series. There were sequels, but they only appeared on mobile devices, and the intense monetization made them mostly unplayable. My dream game is a proper Plants vs. Zombies 2 that feels like the real sequel we deserved, but I don’t think even a remaster like Replanted can make that come true. PopCap Games has become a shell of their former selves having almost exclusively released variants of PvZ over the past decade with the lone outlier being a new mobile Bejeweled game, though I’ll admit that the Garden Warfare multiplayer shooters were a rad spinoff that were more fun than anybody expected at the time.
Back to Replanted, this is a remaster of the classic PvZ that feels like a mishmash of the PC game and the console versions. It has the best of both with some extra content that is mostly fine. I’m playing the PC version, which I’d expect to be the best version to get because it’s really easy to seamlessly switch between mouse and controller at any point to take advantage of what each does best. Mouse controls are the classic PC controls where you click on the plants on the top bar and then on a spot on the ground to plant them in that spot, though the downside is that you have to click on every sun orb and coin that drops. I’ve also noticed that when selecting a plant on the top bar, you cannot right-click to cancel it if the cursor is still on that top bar, which requires moving outside of that bar to cancel the selection. That probably sounds a bit confusing to describe, but I double checked with the original PC version on Steam to see that that version didn’t suffer from that issue.
With a controller, PvZ has this easy control mode that is reminiscent of the console versions of the game, outside of the ability to hit the triggers to suck in all sun orbs on the screen. You can move the cursor around with the D-Pad or analog stick and any nearby sun orbs or coins are sucked in from a good distance to make that the biggest quality of life improvement over playing with a mouse. I would add that the analog stick controls for the cursor feel nice most of the time, though some of the minigames like the Beghouled Twist minigame being hard to get where I wanted because your cursor covers four squares while being centered on one and it often moved around erratically to make it harder to make matches.
You also use the shoulder buttons to switch between the plants in your top bar, and it feels as good as it did on Xbox 360 and PS3, though it doesn’t allow you to change the selection before the level begins, which is a pretty notable change. That was useful for the second runthrough of the campaign when the game picks three plants for your loadout automatically, so you might not have a sunflower in that first slot to make that first move as quickly as possible, and Replanted doesn’t let you make that adjustment before the level starts. Neither of the issues I’ve mentioned for the mouse and controller controls are major gamebreaking issues, so I hope they can be fixed in an update to remove these minor annoyances.
I’ve played a few hours on the Steam Deck to see how it controls there and it’s kind of disappointing that it only offers controller controls. I was expecting to just be able to use the touch pads for the mouse controls so it still had the seamless ability to use either mouse or controller buttons for how you played the game, but they do nothing and that’s a big disappointment. It uses the left touchpad as a D-Pad, but I couldn’t figure out a way to get it to switch to mouse mode and that could be a Steam input skill issue, and I don’t know the specific way I could do that. Maybe somebody figures that out and uploads that to Steam for others to use if it’s possible.
The campaign is still as fun as it always was with your first run being more of a tutorial as you unlock a new plant after each level through all five areas, so that you have a ton of plants by the end after beating the Zomboss. Future playthroughs of the campaign autopick three plants that you must have in your loadout, which adds a bit of a challenge to either finding a use for those plants or filling the rest of your loadout with what you need. That is also where you start your grind for money so that you can unlock the rest of the plants and seed slots for everything else you do in the game. They have all of the minigames, puzzles, and survival modes from the original game along with the Co-op and Vs. modes from the console releases for a loaded package of content that has some new stuff added in on top for Replanted.
Once you beat the campaign, you unlock three new big additions to the adventure mode that includes R.I.P. Mode, Cloudy Day, and the bonus levels. R.I.P. Mode is a hardcore mode that challenges you to beat the campaign without letting one zombie reach the house in any level with only one mower that appears in a random row for each level, which is a nice bit of extra challenge once you’ve finished the easy campaign. The major issue I have with R.I.P. Mode is that it seems to randomly play weird guitar riffs near the end of each level that clashes with the music that’s playing and serves more as a means of thinking it’s broken because of how abrasive it is to the experience. I’d love an option to turn that guitar off entirely because it’s so much louder than anything else in the game and is kind of painful with my hearing issues.
Cloudy Day is a fun challenge where you have to endure levels where the sky goes back and forth from sunny to cloudy a few times throughout that stage, which means that sunflowers go to sleep when the clouds are out so that you’re stuck with the currency you’ve accrued up to that point, at least until the sun returns. They make the plants cost less to deploy, and that challenges you to conserve your energy and find other ways to keep zombies at bay. The bonus levels seem like ideas for minigames that the devs had made for the original release that were cut for fairly obvious reasons since most of them seem fine at best. The weird thing is that they don’t get marked off as being beaten like the rest of the minigames and other extra content, so they’re treated like they don’t matter even in this release.
Replanted on the left and the XBLA version on the right.
As a remaster, Replanted does a good job of making PvZ look good on modern displays with its new resolution and screen mode options that weren’t in the original. I played a good bit more of the original PC and XBLA versions to compare the look here and it’s a good upgrade over the original HD XBLA version and takes more advantage of the real estate, though the original PC version was the roughest version to play today since it is still a 4:3 game with no widescreen support. I’m sure there are fan mods to fix that, but I’m focused on the base versions of these games. The plants and zombies all look like good upgrades with one exception that bugs me the more that I see it, which is the twin sunflower that has been completely changed to have much longer pedals and faces that look more like footballs than the more rounded faces of the originals. I’ll include a very poorly-made MS Paint image to show you the difference to include in this review to back up my complaint here because it’s a minor change that kind of creeps me out when none of the other plants appear any different, especially to this degree. The only other differences I’ve noticed with the art is some of the environment art on the far right of the screen at the start of the level are a bit different with more bushes on the right side of the screen than in the XBLA version and the roof stage has a big hole in the side of the chimney so zombies go in there instead of the top like before. Nothing huge, but they’re worth mentioning.
PvZ’s soundtrack really shines with music from Laura Shigihara. Her work and opverall presence, gave the game amazing vibes that mixes cute, chill music for most of the game that transitioned to more tense music when things are heating up. As far as I’ve seen, the original game featured a dynamic system to change music bits when needed that apparently doesn’t work that way here, which doesn’t really surprise me, since that would potentially ne overlooked for a remaster that didn’t involve Laura or any of the original devs in the making of this game. It doesn’t really ruin anything, but it certainly doesn’t help make this feel like a package that’s done everything possible to improve every part of the game.
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted has been a really fun way to play PvZ once again in a package that is a solid improvement over the original PC version in most ways, but it has enough flaws in the controls and audio that keeps it from being a perfect upgrade for old fans and new players. I hope EA doesn’t remove the original Game of the Year Edition on Steam so that players can have the option of getting either or even both for as much as I have a sickness to play any and every version I can find until I’ve done everything I can. It’s unfortunate that we still have to worry about things like that, but it’s been a common issue with many remasters that publishers assume will be the only version players could want even when more parts of the game are changed than just the visuals. This is probably it for the franchise, so Replanted is as good of a sendoff for Plants vs Zombies as we could have expected.
After nearly 16 and a half years of being one of the best games ever made, Plants vs. Zombies is back on modern platforms as Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted to hopefully shine in 2025. I have extensive history with the…
After nearly 16 and a half years of being one of the best games ever made, Plants vs. Zombies is back on modern platforms as Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted to hopefully shine in 2025. I have extensive history with the original, as it was the first purchase I made on Steam, logging over 80 hours on the game in about two months. I also checked out almost every other version of the game, and clocked in hundreds of more hours more across iOS, Android, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Vita, and DS editions. Each version of the game had interesting ways of adapting classic PvZ gameplay. Even the mobile game was good.
It’s unfortunate that the original Plants vs. Zombies, which we’ll refer to as PvZ in the review from here on, is the only good game in the main tower defense part of this series. There were sequels, but they only appeared on mobile devices, and the intense monetization made them mostly unplayable. My dream game is a proper Plants vs. Zombies 2 that feels like the real sequel we deserved, but I don’t think even a remaster like Replanted can make that come true. PopCap Games has become a shell of their former selves having almost exclusively released variants of PvZ over the past decade with the lone outlier being a new mobile Bejeweled game, though I’ll admit that the Garden Warfare multiplayer shooters were a rad spinoff that were more fun than anybody expected at the time.
Back to Replanted, this is a remaster of the classic PvZ that feels like a mishmash of the PC game and the console versions. It has the best of both with some extra content that is mostly fine. I’m playing the PC version, which I’d expect to be the best version to get because it’s really easy to seamlessly switch between mouse and controller at any point to take advantage of what each does best. Mouse controls are the classic PC controls where you click on the plants on the top bar and then on a spot on the ground to plant them in that spot, though the downside is that you have to click on every sun orb and coin that drops. I’ve also noticed that when selecting a plant on the top bar, you cannot right-click to cancel it if the cursor is still on that top bar, which requires moving outside of that bar to cancel the selection. That probably sounds a bit confusing to describe, but I double checked with the original PC version on Steam to see that that version didn’t suffer from that issue.
With a controller, PvZ has this easy control mode that is reminiscent of the console versions of the game, outside of the ability to hit the triggers to suck in all sun orbs on the screen. You can move the cursor around with the D-Pad or analog stick and any nearby sun orbs or coins are sucked in from a good distance to make that the biggest quality of life improvement over playing with a mouse. I would add that the analog stick controls for the cursor feel nice most of the time, though some of the minigames like the Beghouled Twist minigame being hard to get where I wanted because your cursor covers four squares while being centered on one and it often moved around erratically to make it harder to make matches.
You also use the shoulder buttons to switch between the plants in your top bar, and it feels as good as it did on Xbox 360 and PS3, though it doesn’t allow you to change the selection before the level begins, which is a pretty notable change. That was useful for the second runthrough of the campaign when the game picks three plants for your loadout automatically, so you might not have a sunflower in that first slot to make that first move as quickly as possible, and Replanted doesn’t let you make that adjustment before the level starts. Neither of the issues I’ve mentioned for the mouse and controller controls are major gamebreaking issues, so I hope they can be fixed in an update to remove these minor annoyances.
I’ve played a few hours on the Steam Deck to see how it controls there and it’s kind of disappointing that it only offers controller controls. I was expecting to just be able to use the touch pads for the mouse controls so it still had the seamless ability to use either mouse or controller buttons for how you played the game, but they do nothing and that’s a big disappointment. It uses the left touchpad as a D-Pad, but I couldn’t figure out a way to get it to switch to mouse mode and that could be a Steam input skill issue, and I don’t know the specific way I could do that. Maybe somebody figures that out and uploads that to Steam for others to use if it’s possible.
The campaign is still as fun as it always was with your first run being more of a tutorial as you unlock a new plant after each level through all five areas, so that you have a ton of plants by the end after beating the Zomboss. Future playthroughs of the campaign autopick three plants that you must have in your loadout, which adds a bit of a challenge to either finding a use for those plants or filling the rest of your loadout with what you need. That is also where you start your grind for money so that you can unlock the rest of the plants and seed slots for everything else you do in the game. They have all of the minigames, puzzles, and survival modes from the original game along with the Co-op and Vs. modes from the console releases for a loaded package of content that has some new stuff added in on top for Replanted.
Once you beat the campaign, you unlock three new big additions to the adventure mode that includes R.I.P. Mode, Cloudy Day, and the bonus levels. R.I.P. Mode is a hardcore mode that challenges you to beat the campaign without letting one zombie reach the house in any level with only one mower that appears in a random row for each level, which is a nice bit of extra challenge once you’ve finished the easy campaign. The major issue I have with R.I.P. Mode is that it seems to randomly play weird guitar riffs near the end of each level that clashes with the music that’s playing and serves more as a means of thinking it’s broken because of how abrasive it is to the experience. I’d love an option to turn that guitar off entirely because it’s so much louder than anything else in the game and is kind of painful with my hearing issues.
Cloudy Day is a fun challenge where you have to endure levels where the sky goes back and forth from sunny to cloudy a few times throughout that stage, which means that sunflowers go to sleep when the clouds are out so that you’re stuck with the currency you’ve accrued up to that point, at least until the sun returns. They make the plants cost less to deploy, and that challenges you to conserve your energy and find other ways to keep zombies at bay. The bonus levels seem like ideas for minigames that the devs had made for the original release that were cut for fairly obvious reasons since most of them seem fine at best. The weird thing is that they don’t get marked off as being beaten like the rest of the minigames and other extra content, so they’re treated like they don’t matter even in this release.
Replanted on the left and the XBLA version on the right.
As a remaster, Replanted does a good job of making PvZ look good on modern displays with its new resolution and screen mode options that weren’t in the original. I played a good bit more of the original PC and XBLA versions to compare the look here and it’s a good upgrade over the original HD XBLA version and takes more advantage of the real estate, though the original PC version was the roughest version to play today since it is still a 4:3 game with no widescreen support. I’m sure there are fan mods to fix that, but I’m focused on the base versions of these games. The plants and zombies all look like good upgrades with one exception that bugs me the more that I see it, which is the twin sunflower that has been completely changed to have much longer pedals and faces that look more like footballs than the more rounded faces of the originals. I’ll include a very poorly-made MS Paint image to show you the difference to include in this review to back up my complaint here because it’s a minor change that kind of creeps me out when none of the other plants appear any different, especially to this degree. The only other differences I’ve noticed with the art is some of the environment art on the far right of the screen at the start of the level are a bit different with more bushes on the right side of the screen than in the XBLA version and the roof stage has a big hole in the side of the chimney so zombies go in there instead of the top like before. Nothing huge, but they’re worth mentioning.
PvZ’s soundtrack really shines with music from Laura Shigihara. Her work and opverall presence, gave the game amazing vibes that mixes cute, chill music for most of the game that transitioned to more tense music when things are heating up. As far as I’ve seen, the original game featured a dynamic system to change music bits when needed that apparently doesn’t work that way here, which doesn’t really surprise me, since that would potentially ne overlooked for a remaster that didn’t involve Laura or any of the original devs in the making of this game. It doesn’t really ruin anything, but it certainly doesn’t help make this feel like a package that’s done everything possible to improve every part of the game.
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted has been a really fun way to play PvZ once again in a package that is a solid improvement over the original PC version in most ways, but it has enough flaws in the controls and audio that keeps it from being a perfect upgrade for old fans and new players. I hope EA doesn’t remove the original Game of the Year Edition on Steam so that players can have the option of getting either or even both for as much as I have a sickness to play any and every version I can find until I’ve done everything I can. It’s unfortunate that we still have to worry about things like that, but it’s been a common issue with many remasters that publishers assume will be the only version players could want even when more parts of the game are changed than just the visuals. This is probably it for the franchise, so Replanted is as good of a sendoff for Plants vs Zombies as we could have expected.
by Chris Selogy
