February of 2014 was a quiet one in game releases. A HD reissue of Resident Evil 4 on PC, the poorly received entry of much-loved franchise Thief, and the third entry of the Final Fantasy 13 trilogy all came and went with little more than a whimper. Nothing really seemed to stick in the mind from that month.
Banished gathered up a small but dedicated fan-base sure, and Divinity: Original Sin began its rise to fame in Early Access, yet it’s still a difficult month to remember. Many remember it as the month before Titanfall came out. That is unless they were a fan of killing zombies with peashooters, then they remember it as the beginning of Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare‘s time in their lives.
Going from touchscreen-focused tower defense of sorts to competitive multiplayer online-centric first person shooter was a daring move. Think of it as a bold move akin to landing a paper airplane on the moon or trying to create a plant which can grow both tomatoes and potatoes.
Like the latter though, it worked.
By grafting the sprout of PvZ’s groundwork of undead battling cacti onto the juicier fruits of competitive shoot-em-up multiplayer, PopCap was on the cusp of creating an abomination of nature with Trifid levels of infamy. Lifting the DNA of immobile plants onto a pair of root-shaped legs and sending them off into the world to battle against zombies could have failed in thousands of ways. Instead, it actually all came together in a way both critics and gamers quite enjoyed.
Before we get ahead of ourselves here, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare wasn’t the be all and end all of gaming. It didn’t simultaneously solve world hunger and build bridges between broken countries. It didn’t revive the career of Hayden Christensen or help us all forget the travesty of Battlefield: Earth. Hell it didn’t even unite the warring tribes of gamers beneath one banner.
What it did was construct its own little corner in the massive world of gaming and kept its spot alive, even going so far as to erect a small picket fence while cultivating daffodils in the irradiated soil.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare first came blinking into the world on February 25th in North America, with the European and Australasian releases coming within the following three days. Between then and now, the game has seen a fair amount of success with VGChartz.com coming to an estimated figure of just over 2 million, and that wouldn’t even count digital sales.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare was unique that it was sold about $20 cheaper than most new releases. Eventually, it found its way into the hands of PlayStation 4 owners for free during the PlayStation experience weekend and lives on for Xbox One owners as a part of the EA Access vault.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare only offered three modes across a small number of maps when it appeared. Perhaps the most played of these even to this day is the Gardens and Graveyards mode. This puts the Zombies in an attacking role, battling against the Plants to capture a bunch of their Gardens before the timer runs out on each. This gave the game a constantly evolving target for players to aim at.
Both of the teams have available to them four different classes. Every class has a counterpart of sorts on the opposite team, although there are differences because some of the mirrored abilities are on different classes. For example, the hovering drones are in the grasp of the control-focused Zombie Engineers while their mirror image is found on the long ranged sniper Cactus class for Plants.
So what kept players coming back then and still has them charging into battle against each other now?For now we’re going to disregard things like gameplay, community, or map design and focus on what is perhaps the biggest draw of Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare; loot. Well alright it isn’t necessarily loot. Usually, players are rewarded with a healthy wallet full of coins at the end of any game. These coins are then open to be spent on sticker packs. Within sticker packs are things like consumable items, aesthetic upgrades, or the much-coveted class variants.
Class variants are unlocked by collecting five stickers from the packs for that character type. This is possible via semi-random collection (you’ll never get doubles) or buying the more expensive sticker packs which include all of the stickers for a particular variant. At launch, each of the classes had at least five different variants with more now available thanks to free DLCs.
Yeah that’s right. In a post-Evolve world, free DLC sounds altogether strange and scary. It did exist though, and still does.
Collecting enough coins for one of these character packs is one of the driving forces behind progression in Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare. On average, a game of Gardens and Graveyards would net a player about 10,000 coins with the full packs costing 40,000. That’s four games to probably unlock a new character type. Just enough to keep the player excited while not dangling the carrot on a stick that is a little too long.
Of course, this being an EA title, you could advance in the multiplayer circuit through the purchase of coins for cash. They’re £7.99/$9.99 for 200,000 and give players the opportunity to unlock a grand total of five new variants for the price. Sound like too much? Well it might be for some, but for the amount of time you’ll save it isn’t a bad investment for those who can afford it and really want to get a Peashooter with a Revolver for a face.
To those who felt the paid route was too pricey, Popcap threw in multiple free DLC packs at the player base to keep them interested. A grand total of seven free DLC packs were released with one being offered as a free code from packs of Cheetos purchased in the US. From those came multiple new character variants, maps, and even game modes like Gnome Bomb or Suburbination.
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare‘s leveling system was itself a fairly novel thing too. Rather than rewarding someone for constantly playing the game, something done more easily through giving them coins, players would be given challenges to complete for stars. These challenges were unique to each different class and the total makes up each players perceived “level. As it turns out, this system was a pretty damn ingenious way to keep people playing just to make their number a little bigger. Players were and are even able to skip these if they’re too difficult using Skip Challenge Stars found in Sticker Packs.
Combine these systems with some fairly solid gameplay, a playing field that looks fairly good in Frostbite 3, and a level of accessibility to almost everybody through some fairly simple controls, then you’ve got a look at why Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare saw and still sees some success. Yes it isn’t changing the gaming world, but it made a piece of the world for gamers who enjoyed it a great place to be.
Almost a year later, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare still has a fan-base on all platforms. Load up the game on any console and you’ll be able to find a match. It might take a little time on the PlayStation versions and sometimes on PC Â you can be waiting around for a while (because Origin), but there are people out there still playing the game. Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare turns one year old on Wednesday, so raise a glass and call out a toast to the little game that could.
Hell, there are probably more people talking about it than there are Titanfall. Oh yeah, I went there.
Updated: Feb 23, 2015 01:56 pm