By Sam Coles:
Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare may have graced its
presence on the Xbox One and 360 months ago, but now it’s Sony’s turn to have
this fun and light hearted game with a surprisingly deep multiplayer and to
show us that games don’t have to be serious all the time when it comes down the
shooter genre.
Plants Vs Zombies started its life as a small tower defence
game on the PC and smart phone/tablets and proved to be very popular with its
addicting gameplay and challenge, which made eligible for a sequel and to be
ported to games consoles later boosting its status. It was quite the surprise
to a see a trailer of it last year at E3 to see it take on a different genre in
the form in a third person shooter, the trailer was poking fun at games such as
Battlefield and Call of Duty. It showed us that games can have a sense a humour
and not just be about gritty drama and games can be for everyone and not just
adults (which seems to be the demographic these days), that it’s fun for all
the family as well, but that’s an editorial for another time.
The gameplay is a first person shooter but you play as
plants and zombies rather than space marines or sassy US marines located
somewhere in power armour and you don’t have generic weapons such as pistols,
shotguns and SMG’s.
The characters of each class are imaginative and colourful
with different details and skills. On the plant side you have the peashooter
who is your standard ground soldier who shoots well… peas, the cactus which
acts like a sniper class who shoots single shot spines at a distance, Chomper
who is a melee based class who likes to get close and personal be eating
zombies whole and can avoid attack by burying underground and finally you have
the sunflower that acts as the medic and shoots sun rays to heal your team
mates.
On the Zombie side of the fence it’s more generic when it
comes to character class you have the foot soldier that does exactly says on
the tin, the scientist who acts like the medic because can build things such as
health stations, the engineer who can build portals which teleport you straight
to the action and the All start who reminds of the heavy from Team Fortress 2
if he were an American football player.
When start off each character/class will have one skill, if
you play with that class you’ll level up that class and your overall level,
which will gain you access to new weapons and skills to up the ante in battles.
This could range from the onion drone for the cactus class to the minigun
turret mode for the peashooter character. They’re all different and none of
them are the same or situational for use. You can unlock new skins for the
characters with the stickers you can buy after a match, but these are not only
cosmetic changes these new character skins will give a new primary weapon for
you to use to change up the flow with that class.
The game is multiplayer only so you’ll be battling with up
to 24 players in one match in a competitive circuit and 4-5 in co-op. You have
various game modes such as Vanquish which is a standard team deathmatch,
Gardens and Graveyards which is a version of Battlefield’s rush mode where you
take over or defend a base and the map opens up the more you take over.
Vanquish confirmed is a play on Call of Duty’s kill confirmed but instead of
collecting dog tags you collect orbs, Suburbination which is a domination type mode and
finally Gnome Bomb this is where you have strap a bomb to a gnome and detonate
it at different bases similar to Battlefield 4’s obliteration mode.
You also get a co-op mode called “Garden Ops” which takes inspiration
from the Gears of War franchise with its horde mode where you have to hold out
as long as you can as you face more progressively difficult enemies. It’s
nothing special just another horde mode which I grow tired of.
The only Problem I had with this game as I was playing it on the PS3 was
sometimes there would some horrendous framerate drops especially when the
players are escorting a bomb because there would be too many players in one
place slowing the game down. But overall that’s the only problem and it didn’t
happen too often.
Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare is a fun and light hearted game with a surprisingly
deep multiplayer which will keep you entertained for days, so if you don’t own
a Microsoft console now is your chance People who own a PS3 and PS4, grab some
friends and have some light hearted fun and laugh.
