By Eugene Neubronner, a freelance writer

CUTE but deadly, plants are all that stand in the way between zombies and your brain in Popcap's enjoyable game, Plants vs Zombies (PvZ).

A game in the tower-defence genre, the goal is to plant different greens such as chompers or doom shroom to defend your lawn against the undead. Zombies will walk down one of five lanes (in some levels, six) in the garden leading to your house.

Your plants must try to kill them before they get into the home. The challenge arises in figuring out what to plant, where and when before zombies overrun the garden.

PvZ's nail-biting style of efficient resource management and strategic plant placement is fine-tuned to give players a sense of urgency without ever being overwhelming.

Put down too many offensive plants like the kernel-pult and spikeweed that attack or stymie the enemy's advance and you may run out of sunlight (the game's resource).

Have too many resource plants like sunflowers and marigolds and zombies will eat through them.

Tongue-in-cheek references also abound. An undead dancer zombie looks suspiciously like Michael Jackson in his hit song, Thriller, and even summons backup dancing zombies to aid him.

The catch is that PvZ is a short game. Decent players will pummel the zombies in around 10 hours.

The good news comes in its 20 mini-games, as well as an "endless" Zen garden mode that offer hours of replayability. At just $19.95 (buy at www.store.popcap.com), PvZ is a quick fix that can last players 10 minutes - or hours, depending on how much time they have to play.

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