WARNING: EXPLICIT
If you’ve read my reviews before, you know I tend to try and be cautious in my criticisms—partially because I tend to review indie games and partially because I understand we all have different tastes in games. This weekend I excitedly snatched up a copy of Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare by EA. And you are about to get an unfiltered review because, among other reasons, fuck EA.
I love PvZ. When PvZ 2 came out on ios, I think I beat the entire thing in a weekend. Plus, PvZ 2 was free, so how cool is that? If you aren’t familiar with the PvZ game, it is a tower defense game at its core. You are the plants attempting to defend your home and garden from incoming zombies. How does a plant do this you ask? Well, by shooting peas, zapping with electricity, and by straight up chomping them. Gameplay is essentially broken into 2 parts: first, you choose you plants based on the preview of which zombies you will be fighting (ie. if there is a fire zombie you need to make sure to have an ice plant). Then the zombies start attacking. You collect “sun” and plant plants with the sun as the zombies start ambling toward you. This is basically the premise of PvZ. AND I LOVE IT. It plays exactly to my strengths as a gamer and to what I enjoy: logic, puzzle, and strategy.
Now before I bought the game, I knew EA tried something different with PvZ: GW. The name alone is a reference to Modern Warfare, one of the Call of Duty iterations. But I NEVER imagined that the game was going to be like the one I’ve been playing for the past couple days, or I likely would not have bought it. Let’s run down a list of things that are incredibly, incredibly wrong with this game. (Seriously. I am so mad my post is even on time today. Not good.) Keeop in mind, though, that I am having fun with the game. I like the COD games, and I like online multiplayer shooters in general. This game has good points, though I’m focusing on the negatives today. I’m doing this because the game tricked me into buying it by pretending to be something it’s not. You’ve been warned.
1. There is no trace of the previous PvZ
There is no strategy, no tower defense (at least not in the same way), NO SINGLE PLAYER. Everything a PvZ player could have loved about the first games is completely absent in this version. It is a completely different game that does not play to the tastes of an audience that would like the original PvZ. I have no idea why EA didn’t put in some sort of campaign. Even COD has a campaign! Even 10 traditional levels would have been something. But, no. The only way to play this is online multiplayer.
2.PvZ: MW is COD: MW with plant skins
There is nothing creative about the way PvZ has done multiplayer with this game. There are 2 major modes. In the first mode you team up with 3 other people to fight 10 waves of zombies on various maps. This is very similar to the zombie mode in COD (creative, right?). The second mode is PvP, where you get randomly assignment to be either a zombie or a plant. The first team to 50 kills wins. It’s a fairly fun multiplayer, but it just isn’t what PvZ is about. It makes no sense to me.
3. You have to play online
Of course, since it’s EA, you HAVE to be online to play, plus you have to be logged into the EA servers. I don’t just mean that you have to be online to play the multiplayer. You have to be online to play any of it. Like I said above, there really is no single player. You can start an online match and set it to invite-only and then not invite people. Other than that, you’re SOL if you want to play alone (which, I imagine, PvZ players would want since that’s what the franchise has been in previous iterations). Man I hate EA.
4. The couch co-op is abysmal
One of the reasons I was so excited about this is because I thought a console PvZ would be great for couch co-op. Even if it were in its traditional form, it would be super easy to just hand off the controller as you go through the levels. The only way you can couch co-op in this game is in split screen mode. Don’t get me wrong, split screen is fun. You defend your garden against waves of zombies. However, it also isn’t great because there is no mission, no beating it, just endless waves of zombies. So it’s fun to see how far you get, but other than that it falls flat. And this brings me to my biggest pet peeve in the game: you can’t do couch co-op in multiplayer. Only one person from your console can play in all parts of the game except for the split screen game mode. So when you play multiplayer, if you want to couch co-op you have to switch every-other round. And this really is a pain if one person uses inversion and one doesn’t.
So, should you spend $40 on this game? If you like 3rd person shooters or online multiplayer games, yes. If you like traditional PvZ, no. That said, I am having fun with the game. It just isn’t what I expected, and it is missing key components to make it as good of a game as it could be. I like hoarding up coins to buy plants and then use them in split screen mode. It certainly is enjoyable. But, ultimately it is disappointing. I recommend grabbing the free PvZ 2 on your phone if you liked the original and save your money.
