Review

Taking an successful IP and changing genre, is a very risky thing for any developer to do. Get it right and the rewards are great, allowing you to expand your fan-base and explore new ideas. Get it wrong and you end up with a disaster of Command & Conquer: Renegade proportions. So when PopCap announced that Plants Vs. Zombies was being turned into a shooter, I was apprehensive and enthusiastic at the same time. I need not have worried though. Garden Warfare succeeds because the basic premise of Plants fighting off Zombies and all the humour that came with it, is intact.

The inspiration is taken from the right places: different types of plant and zombie and the way they can link up in battle mirrors the classes from Team Fortress. Different characters will require you to alter your style of play accordingly – play the Chomper and you'll need to stay hidden and try to get close to your targets whereas the All-Star works best when taking on the enemy head on. The more you use each one, the more abilities they will earn too by achieving specific goals. The balance is just about perfect.

There are three main modes of play available: Garden Ops, Team Vanquish and Gardens & Graveyards and each will be familiar to anyone who plays shooter regularly. Garden Ops is you best entry point, which is essentially Hoard mode under a different name. As a team of four plants you must create a garden and then defend it from 10 increasingly tough waves of zombies. Scattered around the map are pots where you can plant additional defences and ensuring you work as a team is essential to survival.

Team Vanquish is this game's version of Team Deathmatch where two teams aim to be the first to 50 vanquishes (this is aimed at kids, so there's no “death”) and Gardens & Graveyards is the same as Rush from the Battlefield series. As the zombies your objective is to push across the maps and destroy each garden, turning it into a graveyard to act as your spawn point, and make your way to the final objective. This is ultimately the most enjoyable mode of the three.

Sadly, the lack of any single player option does hurt the game – even an option to play matches against bots would have been welcome but alas there is nothing. Multiplayer only games are fun when there are a lot of people playing, and at the moment the servers are full, but only the best games manage to maintain a strong community for longer than a year. This could fall victim to EA's policy of server closures quicker than most. When that happens it will be nothing more than a decorative drinks mat.

Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is a game that has divided the UKGN team as there are some of us who really really hated it. I found it to be a very enjoyable game that makes a nice change from the endless supply of military shooters out there. The lower price point reflects make it easy to recommend.

About the Review

Platform

Microsoft Xbox 360

Developer

PopCap

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Released

27th February 2014