"Plants Vs. Zombies Garden Warfare" Review

     "P.V.Z. Garden Warfare"
 

     When you think "Plants Vs. Zombies", the first thing that comes to mind is the 2D tower defense made by Popcap and EA, but you would never expect the company, DICE, to be thrown into the mix and help create a 3rd person shooter out of the game... Well, that's exactly what happened, and props to Popcap and everyone involved, because this was definitely a success.
     "Plants Vs. Zombies Garden Warfare" lets you play as both the plants and the zombies in a small variety of maps and modes. Each team has 4 different classes as you would expect, considering DICE helped out in the game's development. The plants have the Peashooter, the Chomper, the Sunflower, and the Cactus. The zombies have the Foot Soldier, the Engineer, the Scientist, and the All-Star. Each class has its own special abilities ranging from power and brute force, to fast and nimble, to slow moving, but stealthy. These different classes offer lots of variety and the chance for players to try out all the classes to hone their skills. An ability example would be the Chomper, which can burrow itself underground and travel until its under a zombie, emerge from the ground and swallow the zombie right up in one gulp.
     All of the characters are still plenty delightful and charming, even while they are shooting at each other. I noticed that some classes feel a bit more overpowered than being equal as all the rest. Another thing that could use some work are the maps. While well designed, there just aren't enough, but no need to fret, all maps due to come out as DLC will be FREE; thank the Gods. There is an in game "Sticker Shop" where card packs can be opened for varying amounts of coins to unlock new characters and buy consumables to help in combat. Yes, there are micro-transactions, but NO, they do not burden the game-experience at all. They are simply there if you want to get a few better characters or consumables to better yourself in combat. There are 8 multiplayer modes, some are more fun than others. Essentially, they are relatable to some modes in Battlefield or Call of Duty games. There is not a campaign mode, which wouldn't make much sense if there was anyway; there is however, "Garden ops", where you can play solo, or with friends and take on waves of zombies. While fun, your coin earnings will be nowhere near as high as playing a mutiplayer mode such as Team Vanquish(Team Deathmatch) or Gardens and Graveyards(Conquest). Also, kudos to Popcap for still making this feel like the original game in more ways than one.
     "Plants Vs. Zombies Garden Warfare" feels right. It doesn't feel like skins were just slapped onto soldiers from Battlefield. It has a sense of art, its wonderful to look at all of the plants and zombies, to see how much design went into making them, and to see that Popcap really went the extra mile to not only design abilities, extra character costumes, well-designed maps, but is also releasing maps for free. You can tell that a lot of love was put into this game, and that more is on the way.

PROS:
- Creative as all hell
- Player Variety
- Delightful characters
- FREE DLC
- Fair coin earnings

CONS:
- Some overpowered classes
- Not enough maps at time of release
Final Score: 8/10