Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare — First Impressions

Today was the first opportunity to play “Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare” and I wasted no time checking it out.  By no means is this a “final” opinion of the game or even a complete review, (haven’t had enough time to play for that) but this is just some initial thoughts.

After finishing the game install, it immediately prompts you to create, or sign in, to an EA account.  Let me be totally honest, this was not the best way to start a game.  Anytime you are excited to try a new game, the last thing you want is to be forced to create another log in and password.  As if we don’t have ten thousand of them already.  Once created, you can jump into a game and begin slaying.

In case you don’t know, there is no campaign.   I knew this, but had I not, I would have been quite disappointed.  Having said that, it is essentially “Big Team Battle”, and you are either the Plants or the Zombies.  My initial impression of the gameplay is great.  It doesn’t take long to get in a match and once you are in, they last a decent amount of time.  You start out with a choice between 4 Plants or 4 Zombies, depending on which team you are on.  Each character has different abilities and different opportunities to level up.  It is still to early for me to say which team I prefer, but I like aspects from each side.

There is another game mode which is like the original Plants vs Zombies.  In it, you survive wave after wave of zombie hordes.  This mode also allows for split screen cooperative play.  If you have a friend, this proves to be quite entertaining.  It is a nice change of pace, from the frenetic multiplayer.  I am not sure how many waves you have to survive to win, but it gets challenging.

At this stage it is to early to have many complaints, but I do have one.  It pains me to watch the split screen multiplayers vanish and this keeps that unfortunate trend alive.  I was hoping, (against odds) that this would have the ability to play split screen multiplayer, but sadly it does not.  I keep holding out hope that at some point that will happen.

Thus far, I have enjoyed the game and want to give it some more play before making my final analysis.  Until then, may the best Zombie or Plants win.