Casual plus casual equals—surprise!—several freaking lawns’ worth of casual in the new Plants Vs. Zombies downloadable table for Pinball FX2 and Zen Pinball 2, the result of a creative mashup between PopCap Games and Zen Studios, two of the most recognizable names in modern casual gaming.
You’d have to be a brain-dead zombie—maybe one of those vacant-eyed digger zombies–to argue that this table doesn’t do a great job of maximizing PopCap’s mega-popular PvZ license, whether it’s the digitized zombies that pop up and begin trudging toward your flippers or the horrifyingly familiar NOOOOOO! scream that triggers when the ball drains. (And the zombies, presumably, serve your brains as bean dip.) The ball looks like a pea from the Pea-shooter plant. Crazy Dave’s sedan makes frequent appearances. The lawnmower is your ball-save feature and you can use a Melon-pult to clobber cone-head zombies.
Fun stuff for anyone who’s successfully protected their house, roof and pool from the brain-munching hordes on their PC, console or handheld. But sweet Edward G. Zomboss, this is an easy table, easily the most user-friendly thing Zen’s ever designed. Everything about it is designed to assist the player to skyrocketing high scores. Extra balls are handed out like bargain-bin Halloween candy—in my very first game, I accumulated so many I actually began to wonder if there was a software bug preventing “game over” from occurring. Thanks to the central location of the wide ramp that loops the ball into a big red mailbox and eventually triggers the table’s multiball feature, you can expect to experience multiball madness around 5-10 times per game. (Activating it once is enough to earn you the game’s lone Gamerscore achievement.)
Unlike Zen’s recent Avengers movie table, where right- and left-side ball drains were a constant and frustrating hazard, Chomper plants are parked on either side of the PvZ table to snarf up and spit the ball back into play. Those things are handy—or maybe toothy?–in the backyard *and* on the pinball table.
Enjoyment of a license well deployed offsets the lingering feeling that you’re not exactly earning the rain of bonuses and eye-popping table scores solely on the strength of your mad pinball skillz. Hardcore wizards may grumble a little at this casual buffet, but the rest of us can just grin a Crazy Dave grin when the table says “shoot again.”
Pros:
+ Clever and colorful use of the license
+ Smashing zombies with pinballs and Melon-pults is always awesome
+ Great use of sounds from PvZ—screams when the ball drains, etc.
Cons:
– User-friendly features (extra balls, Chomper kick-backs) make the table almost too easy
Game Info:
Platform: DLC for Pinball FX2 on XBLA and Zen Pinball 2 on PS3 and PS Vita. Xbox 360 version reviewed.
Publisher: Zen Studios
Developer: Zen Studios/PopCap
Release Date: 9/5/2012
Genre: Pinball
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Players: 1
Source: Review code provided by publisher
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Aaron R. Conklin has been writing about games and games culture for more than 15 years. A former contributor to Computer Games Magazine and Massive Magazine, his writing has appeared on IGN.com and in newspapers and alt-weeklies across the country. Conklin's an unapologetic Minnesota sports fan living in Madison, Wisconsin, home of the Midwest's most underrated gaming vibe. 
I would agree that this is an “easy” table in that ramps and railways aren’t overly tricky to hit and there aren’t too many dead zones where balls coming back down from a ramp don’t immediately drop past the main flippers or down the right or left.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it an easy table because it doles out extra balls a lot. I too thought it was a fluke that I had managed to rack up so a large score on my second or third attempt, but I prefer to think that Zen has done just a bit of tweaking with their engine or ball handling because while this table seems downright easy, some of the tables from the Marvel collect that I thought were downright frustrating seem to have just enough changed to make the table almost worth playing. Specifically Iron Man. Blade was another one that I didn’t quite enjoy before, but now it has become a bit less frustrating.
The other thing I’m curious to hear about is whether or not the PinballFX shell received an update to include 3D. ZP2 now supports 3D for all tables on the PS3 and hot damn does that make a huge difference in how to play the tables. At first I didn’t think it would really make a difference but I found that the camera zoomed around less to follow the ball because there was a true depth of field that helped me judge where the ball was in relation to the various bumpers and flippers without needing the camera to follow the ball. I would assume that the improved depth of field was present on the 3DS version, but with such a small screen compared to even a 24″ TV I can’t help but think that the effect would be diminished.
One other thing to note with the Cross Buy feature on ZP2 is that I’ve earned my trophy for getting the required Pro Score (of minimally 2000) while playing on the Vita and even though my Pro Score applies to the same account on the PS3 that trophy hasn’t popped. I’m not sure if that is a known bug, but something that should pop eventually I’m sure.
Personally I’m glad that Zen was able to get the FX2 shell wrapper base applied to the PlayStation ecosystem so that all tables going forward can be played without having to load up two different games. Having that base system carry over to the Vita as well is a nice bonus. Having all of my original tables import without a fee is the creamcheese icing on the cake!
I’ll third PvZ being Zen’s easiest table, as multiball and extra balls come in steady supply — I set a high score of 150 million on only my second attempt!
But I think it makes total sense given the license and love that there is a table like this in the lineup. Zen’s done tons of tables that take proper pinball skill to get even a halfway decent score and plenty that are in the middle area, so I think it’s great to have a table that is a bit less demanding to provide balance on the other end of the spectrum. Of course, Zen also provides different operator settings and such for all the tables. I haven’t looked, but I’m sure there are ways to make the table more difficult.