All these years later I still have a grudge against EA. After PopCap delivered two classic PC games, Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies, EA bought 'em up, laid a bunch of 'em off, and turned PopCap into a mobile game developer.

Plants vs. Zombies 2 and Peggle 2 didn’t even come out on PC! Ever! Yes, I am still annoyed about it.

And now look who it is, EA, back again, trying to sell me on a remaster of Plants vs. Zombies. As if I’m gonna be drawn back into your web of betrayal. As if making the visuals bright and crisp and colorful, and adding a bunch of extra modes and minigames, and making it run perfectly on Steam Deck is gonna… is gonna…

Ah, nuts. (Tall-nuts.) I can’t lie, I’ve been playing Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted on my Steam Deck every night this week, and it’s great, and just like I did with the original, I’ll probably sink another 200 hours into it. I just can’t stay mad.

It’s worth noting the original PvZ is still perfectly playable on PC. It looks a bit dated, yeah, very pixelated on modern big screens, but it’s still fine! It runs OK on Steam Deck, too, with a little controller setup tweaking. There’s even a widescreen mod for the original, so if you don’t want to shell out (pumpkin shell out) $20 for Replanted, you definitely don’t need to.

Below I’ve popped in a screenshot from the original and Replanted. (You can click the lower left corner to enlarge them.) It’s not exactly a night-and-day comparison, eh? Heck, even the widescreen support just means you can see the house and the bushes, with all the gameplay still taking place in the 4:3 area of the screen.

(Image credit: EA)

(Image credit: EA)

It is darn crisp, though, I’ll say that much, and the visual upgrade isn’t the only thing going for Replanted. There are also a bunch more game modes and minigames. Cloudy Day mode is like a mashup of daytime and nighttime, where clouds will abruptly roll in and put your sunflowers to sleep, meaning you have to ration your sunlight spending, adding a teensy extra bit of strategy. There’s also hardcore mode, where if you die during adventure mode you lose all your progress, like permadeath, and are sent back to the very start. That adds a bit of stakes to making sure your cob cannon is always locked and loaded.

There are also bonus levels that hearken back to the “Limbo Page” of the original PvZ. If you don’t recall, dataminers discovered a bunch of minigames that never made it into the final game but could still be accessed using cheats. Now you can unlock 10 of those forgotten games midway through adventure mode and play them.

(Image credit: EA)

That includes an “Art Challenge” mode, where you can only place specific plants on specific spots to form a picture (like using several wall-nuts to draw a picture of a giant wall-nut), a game called “Unsodded” where one strip of the lawn can’t be planted on even though zombies will still walk on it, and an “Air Raid” level where the entire attacking army are those hovering balloon zombies.

None of the bonus levels I’ve played have felt like huge winners (which is probably why they were cut from the original game) but they make a nice diversion when you need a break from adventure mode.

And now there’s local multiplayer in PvZ, with a cool co-op mode where you and your partner each get 4 seeds to plant so you’ll have to work together to stop the walking dead. There’s also a versus mode where one player controls the zombies, gathering brain power instead of sunlight as you invade the other player’s lawn.

Throw in all the original minigames, survival mode, and that lovely Zen Garden, and Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is a pretty big package bursting with zombie squashing and yard care. I can’t quite call it a must-buy—like I said, the original is still perfectly playable—but I’m a sucker for a bit of crispness and some new minigames, so I’m pretty sure it’s going to be my nightly Steam Deck go-to for a while.

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