Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9 out of 10

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is a third-person shooter game available from retail stores and for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Plants vs. Zombies originated as a tower defence game released for Windows on May 5th 2009 before being ported to a range of platforms including PS3 and PS Vita. It must be appreciated that after two successful Plants vs. Zombies games; PopCap have attempted to spin the franchise off in a new direction as a third-person shooter, but is it a risk that has paid off?

The story essentially revolves around a war between a zombie uprising and plants as the zombies fight to destroy the plants’ base and gain supremacy over them by means of destruction, while the plants fight to protect their own species and defend their villages and cities, therefore providing a reason for their dispute.

There are two teams between plants and zombies with each having four character classes as the plants include: peashooter, sunflower, chomper and cactus, while the zombies include: soldier, engineer, scientist and all-star as every class has their own range of eight characters per class, which is a great design choice as it provides a lot of variety to the character design. Each character within a class has its own unique levels of ammo, reload, damage and usage, such as the standard peashooter pea cannon shoots peas for ammo, has a fast reload, possesses splash impact damage and mid range usage, while the ice pea cannon shoots frozen peas for ammo, has a fast reload, possesses freezing damage and mid range usage with the changes becoming far more substantial as you progress through unlocking more unique characters within each character class.

There is also plenty of customisation to implement upon your favourite characters with a range of hats, accessories, organics and tattoos to change their appearance as well as a range of unlockable upgrades to improve the impact their abilities can have on a match, while there is even PlayStation exclusive content such as a hat designed upon the styles of Sly Cooper and Ratchet and Clank as tributes to two of PlayStation’s iconic characters that can be equipped to change the appearance of any character within any of the character classes of the plant or zombie teams.

XP and levelling up for your characters is handled a little differently as it is based upon successfully completing challenges in order for you to earn a star with the star progressing you onto the next rank, while the challenges can range from vanquishing a certain amount of enemies with different weapons to reviving a particular amount of team-mates and much more besides in which you can find out what your current challenges and how close you are to completing them on the right of the options menu.

The Garden Ops mode sees players teaming up with a squad to defend a team’s garden from the incoming onslaught of wave after wave of zombies that are absolutely hell bent on destroying the garden. The Garden Ops mode is arguably the biggest game mode of the entire bunch as there are gameplay elements specific to Garden Ops, such as Special Waves will appear during all of the waves with exception to the fifth and tenth waves, although there are as many as 25 special waves with each wave presenting its own unique enemy types during special waves, such as the Brain Freeze including Arctic Troopers and Yeti Imps; the Goon Squad consisting of Exploding Imps and All-Star zombies; and The Z Team consisting of Zombie Heroes including Foot Soldiers, Engineers, Scientists and All-Stars; as well as Boss Waves and many more gameplay elements specific to the Garden Ops game mode.

Outside of the Garden Ops mode there are a further ten game modes, where players will find that Welcome Mat is the perfect place to start learning how to play the game as it contains a system that helps to progress by providing players with more health for the next respawn if gradually performing worse rather than better, although customization and unlocked characters are not allowed.

Team Vanquish is effectively a Team Deathmatch style game mode as it sees Plants and Zombies do battle in a competition to see which team will be the first to successfully vanquish 50 opponents, while the Classic Team Vanquish variant sees both teams striving for the same objective as the Team Vanquish game mode, although character customization, upgrades and unlocked characters are all not allowed.

Gardens and Graveyards sees the zombies fighting to take over the plants’ gardens by turning them into the zombie’s very own graveyards in an expanding map, while the Classic Gardens and Graveyards variant sees both teams striving for the same objective as the Gardens and Graveyards game mode, although character customization, upgrades and unlocked characters are all not allowed.

 

Mixed Mode provides a unique combination of multiple game modes combined into a new breed of game mode, while Gnome Bomb sees the teams of Plants and Zombies fighting each other for control of the Gnome Bomb, which harvests overwhelming amount of power in pursuit of the destruction of the opposing team’s garden or graveyard.

Vanquish Confirmed is a variation on the popular first-person shooter game mode Kill Confirmed in which players do not have to just kill the enemy in order to earn the point, but to also collect an object they dropped or in this case orbs to earn the point for your team, while also denying the opposition from scoring a point by intercepting any orbs dropped by fallen team-mates before the opposition reach them, while Suburbination is in essence a Zones game mode in which you have to capture the three gardens situated around the map with each team accumulating points for capturing and holding onto a garden for as long as they possibly can, while Taco Bandits involves the zombies trying to steal Crazy Dave’s Taco Collection as the plants must protect them.

The Boss Mode allows players to participate in any game mode as Crazy Dave in his flying RV on the side of the plants or Dr. Zomboss in his ZomBlimp on the side of the zombies from the skies looking directly overhead the battlefield where players can unleash a mountain of ammo. Enemy targets can be spotted, airstrikes can be deployed and team-mates can be healed or revived when on the ground; all from an aerial perspective that is just as involving as though you were in amongst the action on the ground, although abilities still need to be recharged by gathering resources, such as catching Sun Drops as Crazy Dave or eating Brainz as Dr. Zomboss.

The environment design is quite varied with amazing intricate detail placed into the surrounding environments of each and every map, each one spanning further sections, daytime and night time included, bringing the total to 18 variations.

The in-game currency is silver coins, which can be earned by having a great performance as players vanquish dozens of enemies and can be spent on purchasing sticker packs from the Sticker Shop. The Sticker Shop allows players to purchase sticker packs which are presented in the same way as collectable cards as you do not necessarily know what is contained within every sticker pack until you have opened them. Whereas players know what they are getting as some packs will provide a particular character such as the Plasma Peashooter pack as it is described as the contest winning Plasma Peashooter designed by Lefran Estera. There is a Trick or Treat pack that could be something great or not so much, while some packs will provide a range of items that will improve your character, but will not divulge by just how much until those packs have been opened, which can sometimes make it a lucky draw in regards to whether players receive something special or completely the opposite.

The stickers from the Sticker Shop are added to the Stickerbook, which is presented as would be expected in a football annual to be with place holders for stickers to be positioned in their assigned slots across ten chapters comprising multiple topics spanning a stunning 362 pages. The ten chapters cover both teams and their respective character classes including: plants, peashooter, sunflower, chomper, cactus, zombies, soldier, engineer, scientist and all-star with each character class having their own set of stickers, weapon upgrades, abilities, accessories, tattoos, hats, organics, gestures and cool stats as well as weapon skins and facial hair for zombies, which are all professionally presented and covered thoroughly.

The cool stats include: total, player and A.I. vanquishes; times K.O.; overall time played, vanquish and K.O. ratio vs. players, highest vanquish streak, coins earned per minute; and total coins earned; alongside some more stats included for other character classes too with the cool stats feature being a great design choice as you can statistically analyse which character class is working best for your style of play.

The humour of the game is fantastic and comes in the form of the zombie enemies having such variation in how they look and behave, such as zombies staggering forward with an orange traffic cone or a bucket on their head, while other zombies will come in the form of reading the newspaper or a zombie contained within a coffin with eyes and a tongue sticking out as it attempts to headbutt any nearby plants, alongside foot soldiers, padded American football players and engineers, amongst others. The humour continues elsewhere in the game beyond the zombie enemy types, such as the subtitle Garden Warfare being a play on the Modern Warfare subtitled Call of Duty games, while some of the game modes and certain areas within maps also contains humorous elements to them.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare supports the share feature that allows players to upload a video clip or a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as players are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores the most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so players still have the chance to decide if they would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between game footage and reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare supports the remote play feature that allows play between almost any PS4 game on the PlayStation Vita via a Wi-Fi internet connection by pairing up the PS4 and Vita via configuring the settings on the PS4 to enable the Vita to connect to it, then entering the code provided from the settings menu on the Vita’s PS4 Link application with the initial setup taking around only two minutes. The performance during remote play is amazing as the graphics, audio and general performance are all identical to that of its PS4 counterpart with the exception of five optimisations to suit the control scheme to the Vita as the controls of aiming and shooting have been moved from L2 and R2 to L and R respectively, while L1 and R1 for performing abilities have now been configured to the left and right of the touch screen with the DualShock 4’s touch pad being replicated on the centre of the Vita’s touch screen to view the scoreboard.

The controls are well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller with the control scheme consisting of pressing L2 to aim; pressing R2 to fire; L1 to perform ability 1; pressing R1 to perform ability 3; pressing triangle to perform ability 2; pressing X to jump; pressing O to interact; pressing square to reload; pressing up, down, left or right on the d-pad to perform gestures; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to move and strafe; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to rotate and look around; pressing the share button takes you to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. There is an alternative control scheme called the classic layout which switches R2 and L2 for R1 and L1 to provide a classic feel for the shooting and aiming controls. The touch pad implementation produces the scoreboard with a simple tap of the touch pad, while the DualShock 4 controller vibrates as whilst shooting at an enemy, as they are shooting back and also during nearby explosions. There is no light bar implementation which is surprising as it could have produced multiple colours to represent a character’s current health starting with green and gradually fading through various tones of yellow, orange, until finally flashing red would signify the absolute point of being knocked out and requiring revival from a team-mate or being reviving by a handy revival pack.

The game runs on the Frostbite 3 engine that powered Battlefield 4, which absolutely shows as it performs absolutely flawlessly regardless of how many characters are on screen at once with a great level of attention to detail as the textures of all of the surrounding environments across all maps look amazing, while the characters look just as good and move with quite fluent animations.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main, game mode, sticker shop, stickerbook, options and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the touch pad and the right analogue stick. The background of the menu screens revolves around the kind of city environment that players would be fighting within as a billboard displays a round-up of the latest news of player achievements and features that have been updated or patched into the game, while a highlight of the presentation is the wonderfully presented sticker shop and stickerbook features.

The audio consists of sound effects and music with the sound effects including jumping, shooting, explosions, healing, along and ambient sound effects such as nearby insects, creatures and water with some basic voice-overs that provide sound effects that are unique to each character class in order to reflect the happiness, excitement or anger along with a range of gestures, while frantic music plays in the background as though to bring an air of comedy to the proceedings as the horde of enemies invade. There is no DualShock 4 speaker implementation which is astounding as it could have produced any of the sound effects with the gestures and reactions from each character class being a good fit or perhaps the frantic music.

The award list includes 46 trophies with 10 Bronze, 10 Silver, 3 Gold and one platinum trophy, while the Zomboss Down content has seven bronze and three silver trophies. The majority of the trophy list can be earned by purely playing the game, rather than necessarily paying a huge amount of detail to the trophy list as they all revolve around natural gameplay elements, such as the Sun Heals bronze trophy for healing 25 team-mates using the Heal Beam while playing as a Sunflower in a session. The hardest trophies have to be the Challenge Accepted gold trophy for reaching level 10 with any level character by completing a variety of challenges; the Going Strong gold trophy for reaching rank 50 by levelling up your characters; and the Garden Crazy gold trophy for completing a Garden Ops match on crazy difficulty. It is estimated that depending upon skill, a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips and some friends to participate in matches that it would take around twenty to twenty-five hundred hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are four difficulty levels including: easy, normal, hard and crazy with the major differences between the easy and crazy difficulty levels along with each difficulty level in between is the significant increase in the amount of enemies that invade with each and every wave which naturally makes it harder to survive, but then the difficulty is increased even further by the enemies being able to simultaneously take more damage from a team’s attacks and inflict more damage with their attacks on your team.

The split-screen multiplayer consists of local co-operative multiplayer for two players in a scaled back version of the online multiplayer as it is only based around the premise of the Garden Ops mode, but does not provide either player with the ability to choose a zombie character and therefore removes any potential competitive element of gameplay during split-screen multiplayer. While the inclusion of split-screen multiplayer is appreciated and the performance is exceptional without any reduction in frame rate or graphical fidelity regardless of how hectic the on-screen action becomes. It would have been better to have four player split-screen with the further increased sociable interaction of allowing online players to drop-in and join a game if players preferred to allow the game to be open to such functionality instead of remaining private, rather than being limited to two players. A further criticism would be that split-screen only allows player 1 to earn coins, complete challenges and earn trophies, which potentially reduces the element of a rewarding experience for player 2.

The online multiplayer component consists of competitive and co-operative elements whilst having the ability to customise a search for a game or create a match. Creating a game allows players to select a map from the ten available, the difficulty of the A.I., and if the game is open to the public or by way of invitation only. The performance of the online multiplayer components holds up well and is without lag even when players have a full quota of players and A.I. on screen at once, which proves to be extremely entertaining.

The insistence upon having an internet connection to even play in split-screen multiplayer could be portrayed as a negative particularly for people who live in rural areas with an inferior and intermittent internet signal; however if players are looking for an online multiplayer community, then Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare’s online offering certainly provides a wealth of content to keep the game fresh. A minor criticism would be the lack of online leaderboards which could have comprised of the amount of enemies vanquished and the amount of enemy waves defeated as well as the wins and losses ratio for games you have participated in.

The replayability stems from a variety of areas as there are a range of game modes for competitive and co-operative multiplayer with split-screen functionality, while there are many character classes amongst the two teams to participate as or fight against. The sticker shop and stickerbook features provide a huge area of unlockable content, which are related to earning coins for in-game performances which are then used for purchasing sticker packs from the sticker shop, therefore making a great performance far more rewarding for the player with all of the features helping to keep the game fresh as they will collectively have players returning to the game for quite a while.

Overall, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare takes the series in a totally new direction while successfully integrating brand new gameplay mechanics galore, therefore the game will appeal regardless of whether players are or are not a fan of Plants vs. Zombies, which certainly makes Garden Warfare a highly recommended purchase that will have players certainly find a lot of enjoyment in experiencing.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare
• Developer: PopCap
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• System: PS4
• Format: Retail/PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: No
• Cross-Play: No
• Players: 1-2 (Local Co-Operative Split-Screen Multiplayer)/2-24 (Online Co-Operative and Competitive Multiplayer)
• Hard Drive Space Required: 18GB (Version 1.01)