Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare Review

Plants vs. Zombies sets itself apart from other multiplayer third-person shooters. Firefights can still be fast and furious, with good shooting mechanics and class-based combat between 24 players, but thanks to its zany character classes and silly sound effects, it’s actually laugh-out-loud funny. It’s a good game that spits bright green peas in the face of today’s brown-and-grey shooters.

Garden Warfare takes the popular characters from Plants vs. Zombies, renders them in surprisingly good-looking 3D, and then pits them against each other in light-hearted warfare. Remember the Cacti? They now run around sniping enemies from a distance with spines, and they can plant potato mines to cover their backs. The Chompers burrow underground and spit goo onto enemies to slow them and deactivate their abilities. While some classes will feel familiar to shooter fans (a sniper using mines is common, after all), it doesn’t feel like a Plants vs. Zombies skin was just slapped over a bland game. Garden Warfare respects the source material and uses it to inspire abilities that make sense and feel good to use.

Plants vs. Zombies’ fun humor also creeps its way into Garden Warfare. The overweight engineer zombie has loose pants, and his butt crack shows when he waddles around the map. The cactus makes hilarious noises, as if a kazoo is stuck in its throat. My favorite example is when the sunflower plants itself in the ground and blasts out a devastating death ray sunbeam, all while smiling with that gigantic, orange happy face. There’s no great writing or snappy one-liners, but it just radiates an enjoyable silliness.

Garden Warfare has a relatively complex class system with all unique classes and abilities on each side. Despite the asymmetry, neither plants nor zombies feels advantaged in any of the three game modes, and it’s easy to jump into. Every class has only three abilities, and each is introduced with short and fun animated tutorial videos as they quickly unlock. So if you have a hunch that the pure-melee chomper class is for you, you only need to play a couple of matches to know for sure.

Of the three modes available, two are pretty standard shooter fare. Team Vanquish is your standard 24-player deathmatch mode, where the first to 50 kills wins. Similar to the ticket system in the Battlefield games, reviving a downed teammate in Garden Warfare subtracts a point from the enemy’s score, which encourages teamwork. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of times I was brought back from the dead without even needing to ask.

Gardens and Graveyards is an attack and defend mode with series of gardens that the zombies need to overtake before time runs out. It's fine, if a bit standard, but the best part is that the final round is always a unique activity like destroying the roots of a giant sunflower lighthouse or getting five zombies into a highly defensible mansion. It’s even more hectic and difficult than the previous stages, and it feels like a finale instead of just an ending. Driving home the last few shots on a final target just before dying is super satisfying.

A handful of maps are available in each mode, and they do a fine job of creating different scenarios within the same game mode. One level is packed with hills and tall buildings, which makes gaining the high ground advantageous. Others are more urban and condensed, making the melee and shotgun classes especially dangerous. Each map also looks distinct thanks to strong landmarks – like a pirate ship or a tree house – and varied art design.

The last mode is more distinctive, and the closest thing to the original Plants vs Zombies tower defense gameplay. It’s a horde-like survival mode, which is you and up to three other friends against computer-controlled zombie enemies. It’s also the only mode you can play in split-screen. You must build and protect a garden from increasingly powerful waves of zombies. The garden can be planted in various places, which is great for replayability because it doesn’t feel like you’re always stuck in one area of a map.

Flowerpots are littered around the map, and in them you can plant several kinds of plants. Certain combinations work better than others against a given zombie type, and it’s satisfying to figure out which flowers work best against which enemies. The tricky and fulfilling part is rearranging your defenses based on which type of wave you’re fighting. The engineer zombies can teleport right past your pots, so long-range attackers would be more useful, for example. For slower zombies, a fire and ice combination works wonders. It requires coordination of all players involved, and pairing abilities together pays off.

What’s interesting is that the potted plants you’re placing are finite. You start with a small inventory of common plants, and more are unlocked through booster packs that can be bought with in-game currency. So while opening a handful of packs might yield 20 common pea shooters, it’s possible you’ll only find two or three snapdragons. Once you use them, they’re gone until you open more packs. Their limited nature makes rounds more tense. Do you really want to use one of your rare plants now, or do you want to hold on to it? It’s good that playing for only a few hours can net enough money to unlock even the most expensive pack, which is guaranteed to include several rare items. Note that while there are no microtransactions in Garden Warfare right now, but EA says they’ll be added in the future. PopCap also plans to support the game with free bi-monthly DLC, including new maps, modes, and other cosmetic items and characters.

Packs also contain accessories to customize your classes. It’s a simple addition, but it’s satisfying to unlock new glasses, mustaches, and other cosmetic bits to make your characters more personalized.