It took me a few days to wrap my head around the thought of PopCap Games spinning the Plants vs. Zombies franchise off into a multiplayer shooter. How do you take a casual 2D tower defense game and morph it into a fully 3D third-person action game? That can’t possibly work, can it?
Turns out, the idea’s so crazy it might just work after all. As I’ve read and watched more about Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, the more I’ve started to see the light: This is a pretty genius idea.
The game appears to strike a great balance between the modern multiplayer shooter design of games like Battlefield and Call of Duty and PvZ‘s quirky brand of humor and tower defense, with Frostbite 3 tech adding a gorgeous next-gen sparkle to the familiar suburban world populated by undead brain eaters and botanical armies. Players will be able to choose their faction and class in “Gardens vs. Graveyards” 24-player competitive modes or team up in a 4-player online co-op mode to fend off zombie attackers across more than 10 unique maps. Hundreds of items will also offer robust character customization options.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will be out in spring 2014 on Xbox One and Xbox 360. The game will be exclusive to Xbox consoles at launch, but don’t worry, releases are planned for PC and other platforms down the road.
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Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com. After a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez, Matt assumed full ownership over VGBlogger, and to this day he is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary! 
Oh, my god this could be fun. It’s great to see the franchise, um, sprouting in some new directions.
ARConklin I know, right? When I first saw the reveal, my first thought was: “Does every franchise really need to turn into a multiplayer shooter?” But watching the dev diary really won me over. The game looks like it really does a great job of maintaining the look and feel of a PvZ game, only from a different point of view.
VGBMatt ARConklin The Dev Diary definitely makes me think this game will be fun