In addition, there are some fantastic sales to jump on as well including the Gamers’ Choice Awards discounts (winners announced tomorrow) and the PS Vita Anniversary Sale celebrating PS Vita’s first year. Read on to learn more about these exceptional sales.

Don’t have PlayStation Plus? Go to the PlayStation Store on your PS3 or PS Vita or click here to get access via the Sony Entertainment Network online store.

February 26th PlayStation Plus Update

Plants Vs. Zombies (PS Vita)

PSN Price: $10.49, Free for PS Plus members

Popcap’s irreverent take on the real time strategy genre is yours to play free on your PS Vita starting this week as a PS Plus member. At first glance, you may think it’s just another cute strategy game. Get your hands on it, and you’ll find an incredible amount of strategy that relies on everything from picking the right plants, determining their placement, and decisions while under fire from masses of zombies. The PS Vita version sports a ton of great features including co-op multiplayer, a ton of modes, and even some mini-games to keep you busy, making putting Plants vs. Zombies down an pleasantly tough proposition.

Retro/Grade (PS3)

PSN Price: $9.99; PS Plus Price: $2.44

Retro/Grade Soundtrack

PSN Price: $7.99; PS Plus Price: $1.74

The game that turned rhythm games upside down is now available at an irresistible price for PS Plus Members! Starting at the end of the game and working your way back to the sound of head-bobbing retro tunes, you’ll need to ensure the pilot makes it alive through his backward journey through time. With 10 dazzling ‘backwards’ worlds, epic boss fights, and a seriously fantastic soundtrack, it’s a deal that everyone should jump on. If you like the music, we also went ahead and put the soundtrack on sale as well! You can grab it for $1.74 on the PS Store as a PS Plus member.

Gamers’ Choice Awards Winners Discounts

Various Discounts for PS Plus Members

You voted, now you’re about to reap the rewards. This week the winners of the Gamers’ Choice Awards go on sale at various discounts across the board. Tune in to PlayStation.Blog tomorrow morning to find out which titles won as voting is still on as of today’s Plus Update and the race in some categories is pretty darn close. If you need a refresher on the nominees and still haven’t cast your vote, click here.

What’s your favorite content from this week’s PS Plus update?

You should leave your thoughts by dropping them below and as usual, I’ll do my best to respond to key questions and comments. We’ve also got the PS Plus section in the PlayStation Community Forums where you can continue chatting about PS Plus, or find other topics to contribute your thoughts to, or start one for yourself. See you in the comments!

Hello PS.Bloggites, today we’re giving you something a little different! We are pleased to welcome ourselves — Jeff Green, Community Manager for PopCap Games and Neil Sorens, Zen Studios’ Creative Director — to the show, as we dynamically tag-team this entry. We wanted to share with you a little bit about how Zen and PopCap worked together to create the Plants vs. Zombies Pinball table, releasing today right alongside Zen Pinball 2 for PlayStation 3 and PS Vita. Enough of us rambling though; take a look at the trailer.

Jeff: The first thing you need to know about this Plants vs. Zombies table is that it is built out of authentic Plants vs. Zombies bits and pieces. We handed Zen Studios original game assets including art, sounds, objects, zombies, flowers, plants, defenses – ok, you get it – in a beautiful package of digital goodness. Zen took these and went to work designing another brilliant pinball table. We asked Crazy Dave for some wisdom to send along to Zen: “MMMMMM PINBALL”.

Neil: When we first received all these assets, our excitement level went through the roof. We were beyond excited! The second thing that went through our mind: wait, Plants vs. Zombies is 2D, are there any 3D assets? Obviously, the answer was no. One of the first things we had to figure out was how to translate a very deliberate, slow-paced 2D game into a fast-paced, frantic pinball game with 3D interactive characters. The team went to work creating a bunch of 3D models for the zombies, plants, Melon Pults, and Crazy Dave’s jalopy. We then had to figure out how to incorporate all of these into the table geometry. Luckily, we received tremendous help from the Plants, and Crazy Dave also turned out to be very supportive.

Jeff: When the Zen Studios team started sending us materials for approval, we were seriously impressed with how they were translating 2D to 3D. It was like Plants vs. Zombies was completely new again, totally remade for a brand new experience. The day playable code showed up, we were all lost in a “wow” moment. We about lost it when the “Going Nuts” mission started and fog came billowing in across the table, while zombies started marching toward the door step. That’s when we knew the true spirit of Plants vs. Zombies had been successfully captured in this pinball creation.

This was the very first time PopCap has ever licensed out any of our game properties or worked with another developer on this level. Zen did a stellar job — the table turned out better than anyone could have expected.

Neil: It’s been quite a good time working on pinball over the past few years. We have had the privilege and honor of working with some of the biggest names in entertainment, and some of the most creative people in the industry. Working with PopCap has certainly been an amazing experience, and it’s really cool that our first project together will release today along with Zen Pinball 2. When I look at the game, I see the work of so many… not just Zen Studios people, but people at Tecmo, Capcom, Marvel, and now PopCap have contributed so much to this game.

We sincerely hope you enjoy the new Zen Pinball 2 platform and Plants vz. Zombies table. Don’t forget, this is a Cross Buy game, so buy it once and get it on both PS3 and PS Vita! If you have any questions about Zen Pinball 2, check out the FAQ we have put together in the Zen Pinball 2 forum. We’ll be here to answer your questions all day long!

Elsewhere in the issue, the battle rages on in our Medal of Honor: Warfighter feature as we get our first look at EA’s second offensive front against rival Activision’s Call of Duty franchise. Warfighter’s focus on Tier One operatives and cinematic action sequences indicate it’s got its sights squarely set on the rumored but as-yet-unconfirmed Black Ops 2. We can’t wait to see the pyrotechnics when these two powerhouses meet on the field of battle.

But the announcement that’s got PTOM worked up this month is Assassin’s Creed III. With a new hero, renewed focus, and enthralling Revolutionary War setting, Ubisoft’s killer new title rebuts the notion that annual installments have diluted this franchises’s impact. We’ve also got big previews hits on crime thrillers Max Payne 3 and the resurrected Sleeping Dogs (previously known as True Crime: Hong Kong).

There’s no shortage of big reviews this month, either, with Mass Effect 3, Street Fighter X Tekken, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and Silent Hill: Downpour leading the way. PS Vita games also continue to leave their mark with third-person shooter Unit 13, the venerable Plants vs. Zombies, and the quirky Escape Plan. Factor in a slew of hot PSN titles and we’ve definitely got more games than time this issue.

PTOM’s May issue arrives at newsstands today, Tuesday, April 10th. Grab it before it’s gone!

Anyway, now that the awkwardness is out of the way and we’re friends again, I am here to tell you that I have another exciting announcement for you! Plants Vs Zombies is coming to your brand-spankin’ new PS Vita today! Yay! If you have never played our action-puzzler — that pits a horde of horticultural heroes against a mob of fetid, undead, brain-eating zombies – there is no better time than now. The PS Vita version is darn near the most perfect version of Plants Vs Zombies yet, taking advantage of the handheld console’s touchscreen and internal motion sensors. And if you have played it before, well, why not play it again? Think of it as training for the real zombie apocalypse, which, not to be too much of a bummer here, could be coming any day now. Why be one of the unfortunate ones who end up in some undead guy’s brain sandwich? Do the responsible thing and prepare now with our game! Your loved ones will thank you later.

If you want to know what you’re actually getting in this version, which I guess is a reasonable enough question, I can tell you that the PS Vita version includes all of these positively wonderful features:

• The complete, classic 50-level adventure game
• The Zen Garden
• 20 mini-games
• 18 puzzle games
• 10 survival games
• 43 Trophies, including one Platinum trophy
• The Zombatar zombie-creation tool
• Online leaderboards

All for a paltry $14.99! That’s less than you’d pay at the movie theater for the latest rom-com movie and a bag of popcorn, and you’ll feel less bad afterward! Or, heck, if you must see the new rom-com movie, you can bring the PS Vita with you and then boot up Plants Vs Zombies once you realize the mistake you made! Either way, it seems like you should get the game, if you ask me.

So download Plants Vs Zombies from the PlayStation Network today! Do it for humanity! And the plants! And for those of us at PopCap who have kids going to college! Don’t make us beg! Because we will if we have to! Enjoy the game! Bye!

So now that we’re all caught up, I have even better news for you today: Plants Vs. Zombies is available NOW (read: soon!) on PSN for a measly $14.99. In a short time, you can close this window this second and start pummeling those infernal, annoying, and dentally-challenged zombies with your loyal, brave army of peashooters and cabbage-pults and gloom shrooms right from the comfort of your very own PlayStation!

I know you want details, rather than more of my dribble, so here’s what I can tell you. Plants Vs Zombies has:

• 50 Adventure levels. The complete, original game.
• Five modes. Adventure, Puzzle, Mini-Games, Survival, and everyone’s favorite, the bliss-inducing Zen Garden.
• Co-op and Versus Play. Team up with a friend or challenge them by each choosing a side—plants or zombies.
• 21 mini-games. Fight the fun-dead in minigames like Zombatany, Wall-nut Bowling and Heavy Weapon.
• Interactive leaderboard. Upgrade to bigger & better houses as you progress and stroll through the leaderboard neighborhood to see your friends’ digs.
• 12 Trophies. Earn awesome ornaments to decorate your lawn.

And that’s really all I know. I’ll be happy to stick around to answer questions. Just try to keep it relatively civil because my therapist says I need to avoid hostile situations ever since I punched that stupid old lady next to me on the plane because she wouldn’t give me the armrest.

Oh yeah, and enjoy the game!

Yes, Plants Vs. Zombies, our splendiferous strategy game that pits loveable eco-friendly plant life against undead, traffic-cone-wearing, brain-eating zombies, is coming soon to PSN. And the only thing we can tell you, if you don’t want your brains to be part of a delicious and wholesome zombie lunch—perhaps with a side of intestines, or maybe some foie gras—is that you get your plants ready hold ‘em back.

Perhaps you did not know that plants are an effective weapon against zombies. Perhaps you weren’t aware, for example, that flinging a slab of butter from a Kernel-pult at an approaching, fly-specked, dentally-challenged zombie would temporarily freeze him in place, allowing your trusty pea-shooters to pummel him with abandon.

If you did not know this, then I humbly submit that you are woefully and shamefully ill-prepared for the upcoming apocalypse. And you only have yourself to blame. The solution? Thank you for asking. We here at PopCap recommend that you pick up Plants Vs. Zombies for PSN. It will teach you everything you need to know to stop the zombies from eating your oh-so-delicious-especially-with-a-lovely-glass-of-Chardonnay brains.