We have all had our fair share in online gaming, whether it has been “Call of Duty,” “GTA,” “Madden” or “Fortnite.” While these games are thriving still and receive constant updates, there is a game that I have countless memories with that no one really talks about anymore, hasn’t received any updates in years and yet still has an active player base. That game is “Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2.”
“Plants vs Zombies” originally was a mobile tower defense game where you have to fend off waves of zombies from entering your house by growing plants in your backyard. But on Feb. 25, 2014, developers PopCap and Electronic Arts published the original Garden Warfare game.
This turned the beloved tower defense game into a third-person arena hero shooter. And to everyone’s amazement, it somehow worked.
While this game was extremely polished, it was so close to being almost perfect, but just two years later, in 2016, a sequel was released titled “Garden Warfare 2.” And to this day, this is easily one of, if not the greatest sequels to a video game ever made.
The first game had only four classes for both the plants and zombies sides. All four were extremely viable, but overall, the zombies always had the upper hand in almost every match.
“Garden Warfare 2” took note of this issue and added three new classes to each faction at launch, single-handedly balancing both teams to be able to compete with each other.
The zombie’s most popular class was the Foot Soldier. He is your typical full auto-blaster character who is good in just about any scenario. In “Garden Warfare 2” they introduced Kernel Corn, which was basically a mirror image of Foot Soldier, but for the plant side.
There was also the Cactus class on the plants, a sniper who was able to pick people off while sitting back from the objective. “Garden Warfare 2” solved the sniper dilemma by adding Captain Deadbeard, once more just a mirror image of its counterpart.
Another complaint most people had about the original game was its maps. While they were not bad by any means, they all felt the same. Every map across all modes took place in a neighborhood on Earth. While they did have their extraterrestrial final objectives, the maps got stale as time went on.
PopCap and EA heard this feedback and went all out on the maps in Garden Warfare. The maps ranged from being on the moon, a Roman, ancient coliseum, a snowy, abandoned village and a giant zombie factory. This is just the basics, there is one more map called “Seeds of Time” that has portals around the map that take you to different environments to brawl in.
“Garden Warfare 1” was known for its goofy cosmetics that could all be earned in the form of sticker packs just by simply playing the game. “Garden Warfare 2” took this great idea and brought it back to the sequel, adding even goofier cosmetics, new abilities and taunts, while also still having the cosmetics from the original.
Now if you know anything about EA, it’s that they like money, so they did add the ability to buy coins for real-life money, but it wasn’t required. It was just simply an option for people who didn’t want to grind out coins.
Another element that was included in these sticker packs was character pieces. Each class in the first game had different variants for each class. For example, the pea shooter had a variant that gave him a fire primary, full auto or even a toxic effect.
“Garden Warfare 2” not only did this for the new characters they added. They brought back almost every character from the first one, and they added all new variants to all the old classes too.
This gives the game unlimited replay value and makes the player want to keep playing. It also keeps the game from feeling repetitive at times. As someone who adores this game, I won’t ignore the over 400 hours I have sunk into this game.
Unfortunately, as time went on, “Garden Warfare 2” received fewer updates, and now, has been almost radio silent for five years. But that hasn’t stopped its dedicated player base from leaving this gem behind. Full lobbies of 24 players can still be found at just about any time of day and still get new players almost every day.
If you haven’t played “Garden Warfare 2,” please do, you will have a blast and it all comes at a price of $20. Most times too, you can find this game on sale for as low as just $2. Although the chances of a third game look nonexistent, we still have this perfect video game thriving all these years later.
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