2014’s Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare was a pleasant surprise. It was charming, colourful and all of its mechanics and systems worked well within the framework of the source material. In this sleeper hit, players controlled various plants and zombies that belonged to different classes of the shooter genre. As expected, players had access to PvZ variants of characters with assault rifles, shotguns, healing items, support abilities and so on.
With Garden Warfare 2, EA is trying to make this sequel bigger and more expansive than the first game. They conducted an open beta for the game last week, and after playing for a few days, its easy to see that Garden Warfare 2 is an extremely safe sequel, but one that is as much fun as the original. Perhaps the biggest new addition in Garden Warfare 2 is a hub area called Backyard Battleground.
All of the menus of the first game have been replaced by a free roam map filled with objects you need to interact with to get to the various menus of the game. Everything from starting a new multiplayer game to changing your active character can be accessed through these objects on the map.
Players had access to a few popular modes on two maps — Z Tech Factory and Frosty Creek. But they also included 24 player modes like Herbal Assault and Gardens & Graveyards. Herbal Assault is similar to the game mode Rush from Battlefield where plants must capture points on the map while zombies need to defend them.
The defending and attacking teams are revered in Gardens & Graveyards. In addition, 3 new characters were added for each faction along with more abilities and items. Everything sounds very generic and it is; but just like the first game, the source material of Plants vs Zombies makes even the most over-utilised game modes and systems fun again.
Garden Warfare 2 is shaping up to be a by the numbers sequel. It is just more expansive in every department by having more characters, abilities, maps, modes, customisation items and so on. But this approach is more than welcome because the core of the game still feels fresh.
