One surprise that EA had up their sleeves that no one saw coming was the newest game in the Plants vs. Zombies franchise that takes the traditional 2D Tower Defense into a stunning 3D world that keeps the trademark look and humour of the beloved game that is played worldwide.
Why don’t you check out the trailer to have a see at what Garden Warfare is all about, and don’t forget this game is made in the Frostbite 3 Engine, the very same engine that is used for Battlefield 4!
You can see from the trailer the colourful 3D world that the game inhabits, it evokes memories of the good old days of Banjo Kazooie due to its chunky art style, something that I've missed sorely since the disappearance of such games.
Garden Warfare is Plants vs. Zombies but on a completely different scale, whilst Popcap are still the developers behind the title, it’s a 3rd person action unlike any game they have made before, and much like the trailer suggests, it looks to be shaping up like a family friendly Battlefield, complete with Garlic Drone UAVs.
The gameplay footage that we saw didn’t quite touch on the Team Fortress style zombies that we see in the trailer, but that could well be Popcap having a bit of a laugh, as the match demoed was still very much a tower defense, where wave upon wave of zombie descended upon your garden as you placed your plants in a 3D space whilst shooting freely with the plant you inhabit. The four plants on show included the classic Peashooter, the Chomper, Sunflower and Cactus, if you played the indie tower defense from Coffee Stain Studios you might agree that the style of gameplay is very similar to their game Sanctum but with multiple players taking on the role of the plants in a 4 player co-operative battle against the zombies, unfortunately this is the only mode announced for the game so far.
A few of the classic zombie types also made an appearance as bosses including the Disco zombie who put out some fast moves, the slow and lumbering Gargantuar, and Dr Zomboss' Zombot.
Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare is coming first to Xbox One, with a later release on Xbox 360, don’t worry PopCap are still continuing to make the games that you have grown up with, and Plants vs. Zombies 2, and Peggle 2 are just two of the traditional puzzle games on their horizon.