 Is it a bomb or the bomb? The extremely popular mobile game is making a venturing into the console playspace. Dr. Zomboss has some really twisted ideas here. It's classic multiplayer modes with a Plants vs Zombies cover.
1. Gameplay
Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare is a great idea anchored by too little content and a progression system designed for a very different game. It’s essentially a kid-friendly version of Medal of Honor. There are four plants, four zombies, three or four game modes, and a small handful of maps. Teamwork is a necessity but no one playing this game is old enough to organize themselves, so each mode ends up being an all-out deathmatch with an occasional objective completed.  The smoke, bright lights, and explosions are pretty common. I’ll start with the good things. Garden Warfare is a very clean game with few major issues. It is a great spinoff for a series that is almost shoehorned into the mobile space. Playing as an individual plant or zombie was a lot of fun. The powers are well designed and the game is fairly well balanced overall. With the right group of people, it could be a ton of fun. Unfortunately, this game stumbles multiple times in its execution. There simply isn’t enough content to try. There are a few game modes but without any sort of friendly AI it’s basically impossible to try them out on your own. The other players are all young, which is understandable for a game of this type. But that means that when I want to actually compete and complete objectives, I often found that I was the only person making the attempt. This is a similar gripe to what I often say about Battlefield, but at least there I feel like both teams occasionally get the job done.  This is one of the few matches where I felt my team was fairly well organized. That could probably be overlooked if it weren’t for the “progression system”. The player can level up individual plants, gain an overall level, and earn coins. Each of these three systems is completely separate from each other. The overall level has no purpose other than telling other players how much you play the game. The plant level gives the player new abilities and costumes, but these levels can only be unlocked by completing challenges, some of which are very difficult to do in any match.  But the coin system is the most annoying system. In order to unlock most unique costumes and powers, the player must earn coins by completing matches. These coins are used to buy card packs, which give the player a random mix of costumes and assistant plants. This would probably have been an interesting system, except that the game rewards players with coins so slowly that it hampers all progression. In addition to this, players that do spend the time to get unlocks are given extra abilities that make them much more powerful than their newer, underpowered counterparts. Cosmetic upgrades are fine, but a progression system that rewards players with better abilities makes games unbalanced and heavily favors veterans over new players.  This is a problem for me. If your kid is too young for Battlefield, Call of Duty, or Medal of Honor, this game is a great way to appease their desire for a competitive shooter without giving them any significant mature content. If your kid is old enough for any other game, just get those other games.
The length of this game really depends on how much you enjoy it. Overall there isn’t much variety of content, but if a player finds it enjoyable the content can last a while. Unfortunately, without splitscreen capabilities on Xbox 360, the replay value of this game plummets dramatically for me. I played this for a few hours before I realized how long it would take to unlock anything interesting.
This game is designed to be simple and easy to figure out, so for the most part it isn’t particularly frustrating. However, it can get fairly annoying when the other players seem to have better upgrades, which puts new players at a disadvantage. Other than this, the game modes are all simple and the maps are fairly easy to navigate, so there shouldn’t be too much frustration. 2. Parental Notices
Violence in this game is fairly benign. The plants function in almost exactly the same way as they do in the mobile title. Pea shooters fire green peas at enemies, which explode into a puff on impact. The cactus plants fire a small spike dart at enemies which has a similar effect. Blood is never shown no matter what damage an enemy takes.  Even the melee plant gets a projectile attack. Zombies have fairly similar attacks, but theirs are all based on some sort of projectile weapon. The scientist has a sort of shotgun, the football player has a football-firing chaingun, etc. These all have similar effects on enemies to the plant’s weapons.  The damage numbers hide most of the violence, and the distance usually does the rest. There are a number of abilities that can have different effects depending on which character type the player is using. For example, the football zombie can dash at enemies. If he collides with one, he sends it flying and deals heavy damage.  Hut-hut... HIKE! The only attack I have seen which is slightly more violent is the piranha plant’s primary attack. If the player comes up behind or underneath an enemy, the piranha plant will chomp it and eat it whole. He will then spend a few seconds chewing on the enemy before swallowing it.  Yum.
Sexuality is not a factor in this game.
Both the plants and the zombies have something that can heal their allies. Plants can be healed either by sunflowers or by little sun pickups that can be found near certain potted plants.  The few people that played as a sunflower were very helpful. Zombie scientists can throw down a healing spray. However, the contents of this spray are not discussed.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea of healing a dead thing.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Anti-law is not a factor in this game.
If you can figure out where the mute button is, this online community is fairly friendly. There were plenty of people who would talk and talk and talk and talk into their microphone without consideration of their fellow players, but these tended to be young kids who might not know how to turn off the microphone. That being said, this community could be more susceptible to bullying or some fairly harsh treatment because of the maturity level of the players. Like I said, as long as the mute button is used liberally, there shouldn’t be too many issues.
A number of the characters have the ability to either run quickly, use a jetpack, jump extremely high, or even teleport. These powers will be used relatively frequently during combat.
Almost all of the zombies’ abilities seem to come from technology, and therefore wouldn’t constitute magic. There are some minor abilities (such as the football zombie’s rushing attack) that could be magically based, but it isn’t particularly clear.  Magical piranha plant spit stuff I suppose. The plant’s powers almost all seem to be magically based though. This is particularly obvious with the sunflower, who can fire beams of sunlight at enemies. As with the zombies, however, these are all fairly minor overall.
Human Disfigurement Technically the zombies are designed to look human, so human disfigurement is a factor. However, because everyone looks like a caricature, this isn’t much of an issue.  Well... it's definitely disfigured...
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