Plants vs Zombies - "Braaaaaains!"

Pop Cap have released some fantastic time sinks, I mean, games in the last few years. Bejeweled, from its humble beginnings on mobile phones has now become a Facebook addiction, and is now available on Xbox Live Arcade. One of the other Arcade games that they released is the hilarious Plants vs Zombies.

As you know, Sarah loves zombies, so this game is the mix of Bejeweled and zombies that Sarah was looking for. She considered downloading it, but then it showed up in her work, so she picked it right up. In a frightening role reversal, I was forced to watch her play the game for at least 5 hours yesterday as she ploughed through the various levels, with a vast array of plants, from the basic Peashooter, the Wall-Nut and Sun-flower (you need sun to grow plants) to the fun 'Little Shop of Horrors' rip, the Chomper, the Jalapeno and my personal favourite, the Squash. He squashes the zombies.

The zombies are not just run of the mill brain-nomming zombies. Sure you have garden-variety zombies who shamble, but it doesn't stop there. Some Zombies use traffic cones, screen doors or buckets to protect themselves, and then there are the more humorous ones, such as the Disco Zombie who summons back up dancers, and the Zomboni, which ices up a lane for a bobsled zombie team.

Situations change, sometimes the zombies attack during the day, when the sun is out. Other times they attack at night when there is no sun, so you will have to create it with you plants. If the front yard doesn't work, they attack the back right through your pool, meaning you have to prepare for aquatic zombies.

It is no surprise to see that P vs Z appears on the top 20 Arcade titles for Xbox Live on Major Nelsons blog (www.majornelson.com) when he posts the latest online activity. It is an ingenious, fun and exciting game, and shows that sometimes the best games have the simplest premises'. Zombies who want your BRAAAAAAAINS!

Plants vs Zombies Game of the Year Limited Edition

The Horde - French Zombies "zut alore!"

Sarah has a real penchant for Zombie movies. When it comes to horror she isn't usually the biggest fan, especially of anything paranormal. But zombies are obviously not real, so she likes them! Last night she brought home The Horde from work.

It started with a loose plotline to give us a reason why people with guns are in a condemned building in France. During the botched assault the cops and criminals find themselves in the middle of Judgement Day, surrounded by zombies, and watching there friends and neighbours who they just killed in the shoot out come back to get them.

There is some attempts to get a decent plotline in here, and perhaps if I spoke French I would have cared, but I didn't. As zombie movies go it managed to avoid quite a few clichés, building on the success of recent zombie-esque movies to avoid the usual tense moment build ups that are now common place.

It is violent, perhaps not in some aspects and in comparison to other zombie flicks, but watching one of the main characters flatten a zombies face on a pillar was pretty gruesome. One of the key features of this film was the hand to hand combat with the zombies. It suffers from clear editing and frame rate issues, but its pretty imaginative as you don't often see the humans squaring off with the undead. The movie has an overall arc, the beginning and the end essentially showing that everyone ends up dead, zombiefied or not.

If you are a zombie nerd like my wife and I, this is worth a watch. If you are casual on horror's, don't bother.