Swatting Zombies in Garden Warfare

Plants VS Zombie: Garden Warfare is a third person shooter from PopCap and EA. You play as the brain hungry zombies or the vine growing, pea shooting, sun ray spraying Plants. This is a play by-play of a match I played of the game on the PlayStation 3. This isn’t a review of the game. It’s more of a retelling of my experience. Think of it as a written Let’s Play. If your interested in my review of the game you can check it out here.

“Pea shooter, yea Ice Pea class sounds good,” I thought to myself.

I clicked the button to select him. The little blue guy, with a mouth the size of a vacuüm cleaner was pivoting in place on the map as the time counter clicked down. 

A chomper spawned next to me. The big-headed plant reminded me of the Venus-fly trap from Little Shop of Horrors. As a kid that movie gave me nightmares. Thankfully, I grew out of my fear of being eaten by man-eating plants.  

The rest of the plant team spawned and the match was underway. This map has a spooky looking building with a long porch area; spanning half the map.  It’s an early habit to run out in front of the building toward the center of the map and try to pick off the enemy team.

Though as I learned time after painful time you do not want to run off and separate yourself from your fellow vegetables (team mates) in this game. So the team strategy was to go around the back of the scary tall building and try to flank the mangy group of Zombies, we were up against. 

Boys and Girls we been spotted!

About halfway through the match, an engineer bot interrupted our plans. The engineer class has a drone in the shape of a flying robot head, and he can use it to take out the enemy team. That’s us!

I was fling peas (Pea shooters shoot peas instead of bullets) at that thing as quick as I could spot it. Luckily, I took it down.

I pressed the triangle button after the drone blew our cover. That Zombie whom manned the flying mechanical head knew where we are on the map and I was sure he would bring friends with him.

I pressed the triangle button, releasing one of my character’s special moves. This move plants the pea shooter in the ground and turns it into a Gatling gun.  Each class has three special moves that takes an amount of time to replenish.

The Engineer, the one I’m sure had the mechanical drone, came barreling over a small hill toward us. He wasn’t the only one, he brought friends.

I was able to mow down the Engineer sending him back to the re-spawn screen. I saw the little skull pop up, that’s how you know you got a kill in this game. I had the biggest Cheshire cat grin on my face.

“Yes, I got him” I said to myself.

Though I wasn’t out of the woods yet, his football player class teammates both pointed their football launchers at me. Footballs took me out in an instant. The sunflower (teammate) beside me tried to revive me though was soon overwhelmed by the attackers. The poor thing soon was picking daisies on the ground next to me.

No worries a quick re-spawn and I was back in the match.

There is a small perch, over the battlefield where the other plants where holding their ground and I soon joined them.  I turned into the Gatling gun once more. I sprayed peas (bullets) over the landscape trying to disperse small pockets of zombies. Players playing as chompers went after a fleeting zombie by tunneling under them and (gulp) eat those guys up like tasty pepperoni pizza. 

The strategy was working till a soldier Zombie took me out from the hilly terrain on the other side of the map. 

Oh, well a quick re-spawn and I was back.

Deploy the Onion

This time I decided to change things up. I switched to the cactus class.

I stood behind my plant buddies and deployed the onion drone; it has a big eye like a Cyclopes in the middle of its body. It takes a bit till it gets airborne. Lucky I was up high enough when I reached enemy lines. Laughing “ha, silly zombies”.

I soon started to see a group of soldier zombies dodging behind the cliffs that was directly opposite of the plant team’s hold out on the porch. I was shooting one, draining his health. With the drone, unless they spot you, you can secretly pick at them. Usually they think the person they are firing at is doing the damage. My team was keeping them distracted for the time being.

I been spotted! A zombie looked up and murmured something foul in that zombie grunt they speak in. To be honest their voices remind me of a murloc from World of Warcraft. 

I was able to dodge the fire of the soldier class’s rifle for a bit but soon, puff, my drone was no more.

My onion drone was gone but I knew where my enemy was. With the Cactus character class I went on the little porch where my team was holding ground.

This character class is great at long-range. She shoots needles, fitting for a cactus. I zoomed in on a few of the enemy zombie players. Picking them off one by one, watching their green bodies spin around as they flopped to the ground. The death animation is so comical in this game.

Teamwork makes for an enjoyable experience

The events of this match and many matches before and after this one taught me to prize team work in the game. Many multiplayer shooters have an emphasises on kill streaks with the true goal of helping your team win on the back burner. This is backwards.

PopCap designed this game with team players viable to gameplay. The different abilities and strength of the classes complement each other. 

In the end my team was victorious. It was a tight match, though we (the plants) ended up winning. After the victory I couldn’t help but smile and sit back on my couch. The world was a bit safer from the zombies that day. 

With all that said I hope you have a better idea of what a Plants VS Zombies Garden Warfare match is like. In the comments bellow let me know if you found this type of documentation of a match informative, entertaining, or just a waste of time. This is something new I’m trying out and the more insight I get into how people responds to it, the better.