Plants vs. Zombies on Vita? Yes, Please.

Around the time when Plants vs. Zombies finally came to PlayStation Network earlier this year, I happened to be extremely sick and confined to bed. While I should have been totally miserable, I wasn't. Instead, I was quite happy to be coughing and sneezing up a storm as I clobbered just about every mode in the game over the course of that week. It was time well-spent, and ever since then, I've been hoping and dreaming for some sort of Plants vs. Zombies sequel.

Well, Plants vs. Zombies II this isn't. But if the build I played was any indication, Plants vs. Zombies on PlayStation Vita represents another reason for fans of the game to pick it up and play it all over again.

When I picked up the Vita and began to play, what I immediately realized was how identical it was in just about every way to the PlayStation Network version that preceded it (and of course all of the other iterations that came before). The interface felt familiar and fluid, and it was easy to get right into the action. Unfortunately, Plants vs. Zombies on PSN doesn't actually add much of anything notable to the experience apart from Vita-specific online leaderboards, but at least you know exactly what you're getting with the Vita version: more of the same. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The real hallmark of the Vita iteration of Plants vs. Zombies will no doubt be its touch controls, which are intuitive and work surprisingly well considering the denseness of everything on the screen at once, as well as how small certain things are, such as the cards that you'll be using to get your plants onto the screen to combat the zombie hordes. Of course, this won't be anything new to those millions of gamers who have already played PvZ on a touch device, but for someone like me, who had his first experience with the game on PSN, it was a great experience. The only difficult item to use when in touch mode was the shovel, which requires you to drag it to the location you wish to use its power, which can be cumbersome.

Disappointingly, when I switched over to manual control using the d-pad or analog stick, I found that touch functionality was instantly turned off. From the moment I switched off touch controls, I had to use manual controls only. This didn't make any sense to me. Why couldn't the game use both at the same time? Why did one have to be turned on and the other off? What if I wanted to use touch controls for menu navigation and manual controls for everything else? As it stands now, you won't be able to do that in Plants vs. Zombies on PlayStation Vita. It will only support one control type or the other at any given time.

Then again, that's a fairly minor gripe. Plants vs. Zombies remains one of the most addicting games I've played in recent memory, and I found myself falling into a familiar time-destroying trap as I sat on the couch, Vita in hand, reliving the glory of zombie-slaying with my plant army. I had to remind myself that I was there to play for a preview, and couldn't sit there for the rest of the night losing myself in PopCap's masterpiece.

Needless to say, I'm excited to play Plants vs. Zombies on the Vita when it comes out next year. Oh, and did I mention that it will be a launch title when PlayStation Vita hits store shelves on February 22, 2012? And that it may just come with a Platinum Trophy to boot? As if I needed another reason to jump back in.

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