The problem with Plants vs Zombies, and the reason it isn't the next Peggle or Bejewelled is the fact that it ends. Eventually you will have finished the game and you won't be able to challenge yourself any further. Peggle and Bejewelled don't really have a foreseeable ending - you can always strive to better your score.
It's confusing that PvZ didn't get a scoring system actually, because it sets itself up for it. The game is Tower Defence with fixed paths - you are a gardener using plants to defend his house against waves of zombies. Like many other TD games, PvZ has different types of enemies and a variety of plants utilising a range of strengths to take them down. The game rewards you with money to buy upgrades to your plants - though the primary resource in the game is sunlight.
The money reward is probably the most obvious way in which they could have lengthened PvZ's longevity - simply measure how much cash you earned each level and allow you to replay them in an effort to earn more. By the end of the game I was farming gold pieces anyway - using specific plants to increase my gold output and other plants to just slow the levels down.
The game mechanics are functionally fine - granted eventually the game gets broken with the introduction of certain plants - and it's a fantastic way to ease your way into the fundamentals of Tower Defence. The game almost encourages symmetrical defences, and then it robs you of it with various hurdles. It's like a reset button on your tactics - well, you adjust your symmetry a little and then you're fine.
Actually the game challenges the player quite well - night levels restrict your resource gathering and hamper your efforts to stick to your typical strategy. Eventually the game actually ramps up to a difficulty level which might challenge even hardened Tower Defenders - no small achievement for a game of this calibre...
At some point I realised that I was taking a game in which flora attacks zombies far too seriously. The game lasts about 8 hours already - which isn't too shabby even for hardcore games these days - and what you get out of it is engrossing fun. The game features puzzles, quirky writing and vibrant colours and it's cheap - it's a great casual game.
The fact that it's not the next Peggle or whatever doesn't really
matter - it's a really good game in its own right. There were definitely choices made in the development process which might have held this game back from being all it can be and the depth in the game is more accurately an
illusion of depth, but it's still very much worth the price.
I'd say Plants vs Zombies is definitely worth a look if you're after a game you can play for five minutes and then leave - come back and play it again another time. Be warned though - you might not be able to stop after just five minutes.
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