I was a weird kid. My friends today reminisce about playing shooters like Halo or Titanfall 2 when they were younger, but my gaming habits were always a bit different. To be honest, I've never been too into games like that, except for one particular franchise, and it's not one you're liketo to suspect. This series was practically my only exposure to shooters for some time, a series that has sadly withered from a sensation to a relic — going out not with a bang, but a whimper.
I'm talking about Garden Warfare.
A spinoff to Plants vs. Zombies, the once-king of casual gaming, the Garden Warfare franchise is a trilogy of third-person shooters that lets you play as both plants and zombies from across the series in a variety of multiplayer modes. It's probably the best thing to come out of EA's acquisition of PvZ — and the huge success seen by the first two entries would suggest I'm not alone in thinking that. However, a jarring shift with the third game in the trilogy led to quite the falling off. Content support for it was soon canceled despite a planned live service lifetime. From prime to obscurity, these shooters followed the trajectory of PvZ's general rise and fall. Now dwelling in the hands of shrinking player bases, I think it's worth shedding a light on just how good all these games were — and still are.
The first Garden Warfare was released in 2014 and received a good amount of content over time, with the game now including a hefty variety of modes, cosmetics, and characters. Both factions have four classes each with swathes of variants (a grand total of 68 characters!). Plants are equipped for defense, with the only true sniper class in the form of Cactus, more area control abilities, and AI plant turrets that can be bought and placed in pots. Meanwhile, zombies have better attack capabilities, like AI zombie summons or Engineer teleporters to get other players back in action after respawning. This is because in this first game's main Gardens and Graveyards mode, where zombies travel across a map capturing objectives, only zombies can attack and only plants can defend. This system carried over to the plant-exclusive Garden Ops mode, where you and up to four friends fight waves of AI zombies.
So many things in Garden Warfare set the series up for success: the huge amount of variants that keep every class fresh, solid gunplay, excellent presentation, that pinging noise after a kill (ah, literally the sweet sound of my childhood). However, the best part by a mile is the sheer chaos involved. Through the few minutes the zombies have to capture an objective, said point will ebb and flow with purple smoke clouds, bean bombs, and corn airstrikes as defenses are chipped away. It might go into overtime, at which point the scramble grows more desperate — zombies just trying to keep one of their number in the objective whilst plants do whatever they can to prevent undead victory at the last second. Potato mines explode in starchy bursts, healing stations are placed to maintain a hold, snipers rush in to aid numbers in the point — every character has something outrageous they can do, each with the potential to add to this calamitous melting pot.
2016's Garden Warfare 2 expands on this perfectly. Set in a future where zombies have taken over, now both factions are given tools to attack and defend — with a whole host of new characters joining the ranks. Each side got three new classes along with new variants for existing classes. The new plant characters really helped make the plants seem more fun to me, as zombies had always been my favorite team in the first game due to their specialization toward offense. Kernel Corn offers inventive mirrors to the Zombie Soldier's abilities, while Citron's power to roll around in a ball offers perhaps the best mobility in the game. Superbrainz on team zombie is one of my favorite additions, sporting lasers for long range and fisticuffs up close. Add all of this to a hub world overrun with content, a new Graveyard Ops mode that lets Zombies have a turn at fighting AI plants, timed events, and customizable private matches, and you've got probably my favorite sequel of all time.
The game was inevitably a hit just as its predecessor was — something that can't be said for the third entry in the series. Battle For Neighbourville dropped at the same time as its trailer in 2019 and ditched the Garden Warfare name ... as well as a lot more. The core gameplay is the same, but everything got a massive makeover — from how old favorites play to the art style; something that makes Citron look like the sentient coin thing from that weird Cryptoland animation. Running was finally added (thank god) but the removal of variants massively narrows down the character pool and the incentive to keep playing. It minimizes the possibilities for chaos and replayability. Add a dash of balancing issues and it's easy to understand why this game has been largely rejected by the fan base.
However, I actually like this game.
Battle For Neighbourville is a far less polished multiplayer experience than its sister games, and it shows. The other two still have active player bases whilse any lobby in the latest game is mostly AI backfill. However, it really shines with its single-player content. Each faction has multiple open worlds to visit, all with a short plotline to fulfill and tons of secrets to find. These each come with boss fights that go far beyond the minibosses of the prior games — sporting big health bars and neat mechanics. My favorite would probably be Olds Cool, a disco zombie piloting a flying disco ball, who had me well on the ropes at times. Bosses are tough customers and more than memorable, inhabiting worlds with the replaybility that the base game lacks. I just wish the multiplayer was as good.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty lonely in my liking for this last entry. A mix of jarring changes, balancing issues, and a mediocre live service direction saw soon the declaration that no new content would be added to the game. This cutting short signaled that we're likely never getting Garden Warfare 4, which is a real shame. It's the end of an era for me but if you're interested in anything I've talked about here, then I'd recommend a trip to the garden. All three games are available on Gamepass, and I couldn't recommend each of them enough. They offer a shooter experience like no other.