PopCap is heavily known for games such as Plants vs Zombies and Peggle, not only for their addictive gameplay, but their charming and cute designs.  And even though they are known for smaller games that usually hit mobile devices or Arcades, this time PopCap has released a retail third parson shooter in the Plants vs Zombies franchise. What is odd about Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is that not only did it keep the great artstyle that PopGames are known for, but it also kept the humor, and more importantly the addictive nature their games bring.  To simply put this review, Garden Warfare is brilliant on so many levels.

To start things of the artstyle looks amazing.  IT is hard to explain to people just what you mean when you’re talking about a cartoony game rather than photo-realistic game, but in Garden Warfare theyre using a little engine called Frostbite, you know that engine that runs Battlefield 4?  Yeah, that would be the one.  The only thing is, I would tell you it looks better than Battlefield 4.  Not even joking this game looks great!  The textures are fantastic, the character models are cute, and the grass, just wow.  Honestly in many ways this may be the first game that I would say I feel like im really in a next generation experience.  It is that good.

The shooting mechanics in Garden Warfare also works.  Some people seemed to be worried about Plants vs Zombies going from a strategy game to a third person shooter becuase they thought it would lose the strategy which the series is known for.  It hasn’t lost the strategy at all.  In Gardens & Graveyards, kind of like Rush in Battlefield, the Zombies must capture six locations against the Plants to win.  In each location they have six minutes to do so, so this needs a lot of team work and strategy.  The plants can plant a number of potted plants to assist in their defense, whether they want to freeze you or just shoot you and the zombies can resurrect AI zombies as distractions to help you plow through the plants.  One complaint online though has been the balancing between Zombies and Plants.  Plants seem to be able to defend much easier than the Zombies attack.  This is largely because a lot of people who play don’t play objectives and just sit back trying to kill people.  This is odd because Garden Warfare promotes winning over Kill Death.  Even then I play objectives and manage over a 2.0 kill death so it isn’t like you cant do both.  Another issue for the zombies is that the Plants rely on abilities more than the zombies.  This balances things and unbalances them at the same time.  Zombies in general are much more reliable when it comes to their primary weapon.  For example you should be able to beat any plant one on one if you see them by their selves.  However as I said the plants rely on abilities more than their primary weapons.  You have the Cactus who has potato mines that usually spams them in the Garden area to blow up helpless zombies, or the peashooter that has the Chile bomb that can wipe out multiple zombies in one blow.  This can make winning as a zombie brutally difficult.  Luckily PopCap has already been updating the game to make it easier for the zombies including capturing at a quicker rate and making tweaking the zombies to make them a little stronger.  In fact it has become very balanced since the patch first released.

There is also other game modes like Vanquish which is basically Team Death match and Garden Ops which is similar to horde mode. Garden Ops will send waves of zombies at you each round with a group of 4 people and after so many waves you will go against a ZomBoss.  Not only is it fun but it can be challenging as well. All in all there isn’t too many game modes, but both Garden Ops and Gardens & Graveyards is so addicting you won’t even notice.  This is a classic example of quality being better than quantity.  Even then they’re giving free DLC to add to our fun in Garden Warfare.  Until then you can spends days in Garden Warfare just trying to unlock new customizations and characters for your plants and zombies.

To sum things up, this game is not only a great game, but id rank it up there with the best competitive third person shooters like Gears of War.  It is charming, funny, and fun.  No doubt about it, I love this game and I’d recommend it to anybody.

Nice review! I'll buy this game soon since it looks really fun.

Def do, its amazing :D  Enjoy! And thanks 

Cool im still on the fenceon this and Ryse. I'll eventually get both though.

Id def recommend PvZ but id say Ryse is more of a rent.  Still enjoyed it though

This game is so awesome! Definite buy for anyone on the fence.

Couldnt agree more.  $40 and completely worth it :D

looks like a fun game, might try it when its really cheap or never.
PvZ:GW vs TF?
GW already wins price and graphics
how about
features/game modes?
lasting appeal?
gameplay?
etc

Great review.

When's it coming to PS3/4?

Does it have splitscreen? Very keen to have a bit of local co-op / competitive fun.

I've only played a little bit of the game (three matches to be specific) but the game is so terribly laggy/glitchy/something that I can't even play it. The first game my character was glitching back and forth a couple of feet really rapidly (about 5 times a second) and the second and third game was only slightly better. It only did the glitching thing whenever a zombie came within 10 feet of me.

I'll probably try it every few days to see if that's changed but so far I am not impressed with it because of that fact.