Impressions: Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare (Xbox 360)

EA. The very company that gave us trouble over the years always seems to think we love them. Every year they release a sports game, while we often question what kind of improvements they could do. The release of SimCity last year was nothing short of a disaster, but even now I still enjoy playing the game because at least they fixed a few things with it. But one has to question where they could draw the line. With next gen systems here, I often wonder where I should be when everything is said and done.

While everyone is celebrating the release of both the PS4 and the Xbox One, I'm still here with my lovely PS3 and Xbox 360, which has been collecting dust over the past many months due to my previous hard drive deciding it hated me and corrupted itself into a phantom like sleep. Left without a hard drive, I've spent my months playing on the PS3 and PC, wondering, if ever, I will return to the mighty land of Microsoft and fan over the latest game.

I just didn't know this return would be based on one of the most popular games EA and Popcap would ever create.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is currently available on the Xbox One and Xbox 360, with plans to be released on the PC in the future, with maybe a chance it may appear on the Sony systems as well. Maybe. Anyways, this game was announced last year at E3 and I was interested in it. Not much but enough to keep an eye on it. As it released a few weeks back, I decided to look up some videos and see what the fuss is about. After much looking, I decided to dust off my Xbox 360 and grab the game.

Problem I faced was a hard drive and a nonworking controller, plus the fact that I no longer had Gold membership anymore. So, after taking a trip to my local game store (not Gamestop, but a true local game store that buys, sells and trades all games past and new) I managed to get a decent hard drive for very little cost due to me having credit at the store. After a trip to Best Buy and Gamestop, I returned home and was ready to face whatever danger lurks in this very game. I have to admit, regardless of how I think of Popcap, I'm always on the fence when it comes to EA.

(Also to point out, the biggest difference between the Xbox One version of the game compared to the 360 version is split screen, as well as a Boss Mode)

Garden Warfare is a funny take in the Plants vs. Zombies universe. For those who might not know (if you don't know, somethings wrong with you fella) Plants vs. Zombies is just that: Zombies trying to feed on your brains and your very last defense is the loveable, cute Plants that you plant to defend your home. Becoming one of the most popular games in the world, EA and Popcap decided to surprise everyone with Garden Warfare, where the Plants and Zombies now have their own abilities and plays much like a shooter game.

However, this game is a mix between the Battlefield games, Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2 and Gears of War games, peppered with Plants vs. Zombies. And you know what? This actually makes it a fun game.

Let us discuss the characters, or classes, in this game before we dive into the meat and potatoes of the game. First we have Team Plants, the loveable plants of the game. The Peashooter is your standard shooter of peas and chile bombs that can go into hyper mode and jump on buildings to take out zombies with his peas. The Chomper is the sneaky plant that burrows under ground and can pop up eating zombies, helpful for those pesky ones you deal with online. The Cactus is your sniper of the group, shooting its spikes from a distance and can leave behind potato mines, as well as a special ability that sends out a little fighter in the air that rains death and fun times towards the zombies. The Sunflower is the healer of the group and can heal, as well as damage, the zombies with the Sun Beam. But not beind them, are Team Zombie.

They consist of the Foot Solider, capable of shooting down the plants and uses the ZPG on groups of them to take them down. The Engineer can use his concrete shooter to knock down the plants and uses his little fighter, much like the Cactus, in battle as well. The Scientist is the healer of the group, capable of placing Zombie Healing stations to heal the others in battle, while using a teleporter to appear behind the plants and take them out. The All Star is the heavy of the group, capable of using its gatling gun to take down plants from a distance and use a charging ability to clear out the rest of them.

Each of these characters have their strengths and weaknesses and it just depends on who you want to play as. While the Plants seem to be more support, Zombies are the attackers but the often also goes on which game mode you decide to play and this is where things will get interesting.

Team Vanquish is just that, where Plants will take on Zombies and the first to vanquish 50 opponents will win the game. However, you can revive your friends when they fall in battle and the other team loses a point since your friend is revived (Warning: if you get eaten by a Chomper, there's no reviving). A simple mode where things can get hectic quickly depending on which side your on.

Gardens and Graveyards is a mode where the Zombies are trying to either take over the main base of the Plants or trying to destroy something in the end. Much like Battlefield, it is the goal of the game for either the Plants to stop the Zombies from progressing forward and stopping them early, or for the Zombies to take over base after base until they get to their target and one last ditch effort to stop them kicks in. This mode, while longer, is more towards who will be the one to stop who. I've been on the winning end of the Zombies more often then when I'm on the Plants but that could change.

Before I continue, the leveling system is actually quite simple then just playing the game and gaining exp. Every character presents you with a set of challenges. As you complete them, you level up as you go. You earn coins by defeating these challenges or playing the game as you go and you can then use these coins to buy packs, which can give you cards for Garden Ops.

Garden Ops is much like Horde Mode for Gears of War or the Zombies mode from Call of Duty. You and three people are set in the world as Plants and pick a place to set up a garden. You can plant some of the well known plants from the PvZ world into pots to help defend the garden from Zombies. After ten waves, you race back to where you started, in hopes of getting out of there alive. It's really a fun little mode to test your skills on the battlefield.

Back to the packs, you can use the items to plant more plants or zombies within Garden Ops and Gardens and Graveyards. It's fun to see zombies you fought on the PC now fighting alongside you in 3D. You can also get new items and taunts for your characters, as well as have new characters unlocked as well. How that works is the Peashooter for example, can shoot poison peas at the zombies and other such characters. However, if you really want to get those new characters, you have to save some coins and buy the more expensive packs. While microtransactions aren't available yet, they may be in the future, something I don't know if I'm interested in seeing.

DLC will be free and will give new characters to unlock and modes as well. Gnome Bomb is where the Plants and Zombies try to control a Gnome Bomb and try to plant it to earn points. While I haven't tried the mode yet, I think it's a lot of fun.

Given what I just said, Garden Warfare is actually a very fun game. Now look, I'm not a fan of shooters because every year, we get a new one (looking at you Call of Duty) but Garden Warfare is a funny take on the whole shooter universe. What else can you do then just laugh as your a Sunflower holding a purse because you wanted to give some personalty to your character. If the game were to be released on the PS3, I would get it for that system too because it's a fun game.

However, I think one of the biggest things you will notice about the game is that there's no single player story or nothing with the game. It's all online for you and your friends and maybe people might not like that. Some people prefer single player and might never play online and that's alright. But this game wants you to get some friends and play every night to have fun. So far, connection issues haven't appear (a shock for an EA game) and so far, I've been able to get into games pretty quickly without waiting. I can't give a solid review number on it yet because obviously I still have a lot more to explore with the game but I'm telling you, if your not a shooter person, try to give Garden Warfare a chance. It's a funny take on the universe of the series but it does it well enough that it can stand as a great game in the future. With free DLC coming in the future (Gnome Bomb is one of the free modes you get for the first DLC) I think EA can actually be looked as a nice company. Granted, I have to pay extra because of my lack of hard drive and gold membership but I think, it was worth it in the end.

If I did have to give a rating, so far it sits at an 8 out of 10. It could stay the same or go up and down as the months go by but right now, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is a game I'm really enjoying right now and might just force my friends to get it on the PC because it's that fun. It's no game of the year, but really it could be. And the game is rated E10+ so it's a safe game for kids to play without all the blood and cussing involved. You either love the game or you think it's stupid. I think it's a fun game that everyone who can either play on the 360/One or wait till it goes on the PC or maybe future releases on the PS3/PS4 to at least give it a chance.