PLANTS VS ZOMBIE
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
When it comes to shooter sequels, the delightfully animated and colorful Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 shows just the kind of growth I like to see. Like a big juicy brain, there’s lots to chew on with a variety of single-player and multiplayer modes, maps, and customization options.
While the simplicity and ease of use of the original quartet of characters on each side will be attractive to series newcomers and can certainly hold their own in battle, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2's biggest attraction are the six interesting new classes and their fun abilities. On the Plants side, Kernel Corn brings much-needed heavy firepower to the floral troops with a rocket launcher, gun-assisted rocket jump, and airstrike abilities, balanced out by his extremely slow movement. The orange-based Citron is almost the exact opposite; he’s very defense-based, with a temporary shield ability and a ball form that can get him out of action fast. The magic-using Rose is the real wild card, as she can slow down enemies, turn them into goats, or even very briefly turn into an apparition with a powerful attack. While Rose has a bit higher of a learning curve, she can be pretty useful once you master some of her weirder attacks.
I would attack the flying shrimp robot with my shoulder-mounted freeze ray, but a pirate just set me on fire and now I need to find a sunflower so I don't die before my team destroys the giant boot battering our castle gate.
In other words, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 allies itself with light-hearted shooters like Splatoon rather than going for the gritty realism endemic to the genre. It doubles down on the established PvZ formula by maintaining its cheesy humor and silly costumes while adding new characters, updated modes, and additional solo content, plus a host of smaller improvements throughout. Most of this new material--particularly the extra characters--enhance the already enjoyable core experience, though the glacially-paced progression and repetitive single-player component dampen the fun.
Remember the early days of online multiplayer shooters, when most players were too busy having fun to worry about things like stats or other players’ performance or who your mother may or may not have slept with? Garden Warfare 2 remembers.
In 2014 EA and Popcap games made a competitive online shooter for consoles and PC based on a wildly popular, mostly mobile defense game. Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare felt like a joke that had been taken way too far. What sort of overlap would there be between casual mobile gamers and online shooter fans? The question drove me to create a Venn diagram.
Remember the early days of online multiplayer shooters, when most players were too busy having fun to worry about things like stats or other players’ performance or who your mother may or may not have slept with? Garden Warfare 2 remembers.
In 2014 EA and Popcap games made a competitive online shooter for consoles and PC based on a wildly popular, mostly mobile defense game. Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare felt like a joke that had been taken way too far. What sort of overlap would there be between casual mobile gamers and online shooter fans? The question drove me to create a Venn diagram.
As for the Zombies, there’s the melee-focused Super Brainz, who has extremely potent up-close attacks to compensate for underwhelming projectiles, and the Imp, who has extremely low health but – if he lives long enough – can summon a powerful mech every few minutes. If there’s one weak spot amongst the new crew, it’s Captain Deadbeard. He has a decent cannon attack, but his other abilities are done better by other troops and his primary weapon isn't quite up to snuff with the rest of the new recruits.
The most noticeable difference for returning players is structural. The entire game now revolves around a playable hub area, with plants on one side, zombies on the other, and a contested area in between. There's also a decent amount of space around the edges littered with items to collect and secrets to uncover, including a few mini-games that can easily devour more time than you intended. The hub area's not only loaded with plenty of pleasant diversions, it also provides some context that allows the rest of the experience to feel a bit more meaningful. Both sides have distinct personalities, and while their oddball rivalry may be thin, it's enough to make the action make sense. It's also an excuse to bombard players with puns and dad jokes, and how could you not love that?
Beyond its narrative function, the hub world contains portals to all the various modes, including the cooperative Garden/Graveyard Ops horde mode, the revamped online multiplayer component, and the brand new single-player campaign. Unfortunately, "campaign" might be too generous a description. Most missions send you on a fetch quest in the hub world or throw you into a Garden Ops match with a finite number of enemy waves, with minimal XP and currency rewards when you succeed. Don't expect any exciting set pieces or decicated environments. Still, if you manage to grind through to the end of either team's story, you unlock a Blood Dragon-esque surprise that's pretty worthwhile. And if you're really desperate to avoid other humans, you can actually play every single mode with AI opponents and allies, both of whom are now far more intelligent compared to the original Garden Warfare.
As it turns out, my Venn diagram was far from accurate. There’s much more overlap between those two circles. The problem was I was thinking of shooter fans of the moment, the ones from Call of Duty or Battlefield, ready to rain down hell on anyone not playing up to snuff.
I didn’t take into account the casual competitive shooter fans. Older gamers who were really into games like Unreal when it first dropped, when the genre was fresh and new and everyone was fumbling about at the same level and having fun doing it. The gamers who pick up a Call of Duty game to play through the story, then paw at multiplayer like curious kittens before being smacked away by the rolled-up newspaper of more hardcore players.
Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is a game for those people. Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 doubly so.
Then there’s the original set of four characters on each side, but they’ve been in short supply in online matches thus far for good reason; short of the healer class, there’s little beckoning a return to Garden Warfare’s founders when the new classes have so many more interesting things to do.
Across the board, Garden Warfare 2 could be a bit more welcoming to newcomers; instead of proper tutorials introducing each new skill, there are only brief videos without any text or dialogue to demonstrate, and it doesn’t give you much of an idea as to how they’re actually best used. If you're a complete newcomer, good luck – there are no such intros for the original Garden Warfare warriors.
For the entire cast, the character customization lets you expand their look and abilities via random cards in purchased packs (with earned in-game currency), and that’s is the constant carrot that's kept me playing Garden Warfare 2. Whether it's new attire like a jiffy pop hat for Kernel Corn, a harmonica for Citron, a Batman-like mask for Super Brainz, or entire character variants that offer neat tweaks to weapons or abilities (like a witch doctor Rose who shoots poison or a Deadbeard variant with a rocket launcher you can detonate in midair), I've found myself playing an extra match here and there to earn enough for a slightly more promising pack. The fact that the 75,000 coins to purchase the priciest packs that guarantee character variants can be earned within two hours of hard-fought battles makes the in-game economy tough but fair.
While the single-player content is a bit of a bust, the new characters are anything but. The plants and zombies receive three new characters apiece, bringing the game's total to 14--an impressive number when you consider just how diverse they are both visually and mechanically. Every character operates in a totally different way--with different movement speeds, primary weapons, levels of health, special abilities, and more--and crazier still, there are 110 variants total. That's 110 different character forms, from scuba zombies to icy oranges, that function in inventive, mechanically distinct ways.
Each base character also embodies a specific archetype like tank or sniper, so the newcomers help to better balance both teams. Every character seems to have a counter-character; if you're getting dominated by someone, there's generally a combatant you can swap to in order to gain the upperhand. Because matchups are so crucial, strategy becomes a surprisingly important part of the experience, and it only works because the roster is so rich. When it comes to character diversity, Garden Warfare 2 outclasses other shooters in every way.
But this is where progression pacing becomes a problem. Characters level individually, so gaining experience and earning unlocks with one variant doesn't impact the others. This would be fine except leveling takes forever to payoff. You can boost one character to level five by playing online for roughly an hour. You know what that gets you? One passive character upgrade out what seems to be 24 possible, judging by the menu. Now imagine how long it would take to grind to level 50 (the current cap) with all 110 character variants. It's totally unnecessary and means you may not be able to swap to a strategically advantageous character without abandoning your upgraded character.
While it’s great fun to go online and join in the often-crazy 24-player war between the eponymous factions, just about every single mode can also be tackled with AI partners and enemies, and in split-screen co-op. Even better, you can customize the layouts of each team and apply crazy modifiers like never-empty weapons, double speed, or crazy knockbacks that send you across the map when hit. The AI is pretty good, though it’s not the best at handling Imps - on higher difficulties they usually die long before their mechs are ready.
This problem also extends to unlocks. The only way to acquire consumables, costumes, and new variants is to buy random sticker packs, but currency accrues just as slowly as XP. This severely limits how frequently you can buy new stuff, and when you do, there's no guarantee you'll even get what you're hoping for. With such an incredible wealth of content, the game could have given you a new character variant every 15 minutes and it still would have taken nearly 30 hours to earn them all. At its current pace, it will take hundreds of hours.
The good news is, anyone who played the original game can transfer all their characters over, and you can buy sticker packs and upgrade characters between rounds when playing online, which at least simplifies the process. It's also totally possible to enjoy Garden Warfare 2's robust online multiplayer with even basic, low-level characters. The borderline chaotic action emphasizes team play and rewards both offensive and defensive actions. I did find myself missing certain shooter mainstays like sprint, crouch, and basic melee options, but the shooting still feels tight and satisfying. Plus, the character's creative ability sets ended up driving most the moment-to-moment gameplay anyway, which led to plenty of glorious moments of chomping, bombing, and burning.
The go-it-alone experience is best in the wave-based Ops modes, where you can spawn three teammates and hot-swap between them to take on the randomized enemies. Garden Warfare 2 never needles you to switch up characters, but doing so is the best way to learn new ways to fight outside your preferred Plant or Zombie.
Aside from that, Garden Warfare 2 has some underwhelming mission-based campaigns for each side. Each mission is a slight tweak on a multiplayer mode, save for the crazy final mission. I don't want to spoil it, but the insanity of the new wave-based combat style is a wonderful capper that I was glad to jump right back into, even if it is a weird thematic shift. While the less-dynamic missions are still a good way to earn some coins and learn the ropes before heading online, I’ve had more of an impetus to keep playing thanks to the constantly changing active quests that offer up bonus XP multipliers and extra currency. Whether it’s taking out a specific enemy type a certain amount of times, notching kills with particular abilities, or just winning in a specific mode, I’ve found myself using the active quests as inspiration to try mix up my playstyle.
While you will of course find standard team deathmatch and Call of Duty-style Kill Confirmed modes, there's also a modified version of Battlefield's Rush mode that sees two teams attacking and defending hold points across a progressive series of areas, as well as a novel match type that forces two teams to fight for a single randomly-spawning bomb. And unlike the original game, zombies can now attack and defend in every mode (including Graveyard Ops) instead of being full-time aggressors. The maps also shine, with hazards, bottlenecks, verticality, and plenty of visual details. Overall, the strong mix of maps and modes should be able to keep the player base engaged at least long enough for everyone to earn a handful of character variants. So, a while.
With more generous pacing and worthwhile single-player content, Garden Warfare 2 would have been a truly outstanding game, but even without those things, it's a robust shooter with an astounding level of mechanical diversity that all but guarantees you'll encounter something new every round you play. And of course, its endearingly ridiculous presentation remains true to the series roots, further proving shooters don't have to be gray and gritty to offer a rewarding experience.
