Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is an online-only, class-based, third-person shooter with a tongue-in-cheek approach to modern day shooters, set in the Plants vs. Zombies universe . The game vastly deviates from the tower defense genre and puts players in the shoes (or roots) of either zombies or plants in all-out warfare.
Each side has four different classes with their own unique abilities and strengths:
Peashooter: Very fast and agile, able to root in place and unleash a torrent of peas at opponents. They can also run and jump at incredible speeds and use a chili bean bomb to devastate any opponent caught within the blast radius.
Zombie : The plant counterpart, with abilities such as sprinting and using impunts to take out groups of plants.
Sunflower : A support class that can heal and buff allies. They also have a powerful beam attack that can destroy zombies.
Pear : A stealthy class that can move quickly and quietly, dealing damage from behind enemy lines.
There are different variations of each class, which can give them different weapons and elemental damaging effects. Players can unlock these classes and abilities by completing games and challenges and earning coins to buy card packs.
There is a 4-player co-op mode called Garden Ops in which up to four friends or strangers can team up and defend their garden against 10 waves of A.I. zombies. After wave five and ten, the players will have a boss fight that is determined by a slot machine.
The other modes are competitive, including:
Welcome Mat: A basic team deathmatch where players start out with default classes as well as abilities and each time they are vanquished they are given a health boost.
Team Vanquish: A standard team deathmatch where the team with 50 vanquishes wins the match.
Gardens & Graveyards: A mode where plants defend gardens against zombies with the goal of the zombies to stay within a predetermined area around the garden.
Classic Team Vanquish: Team deathmatch but with default classes and abilities.
Classic Gardens & Graveyards: The same mode but with default classes and abilities.
Mixed Mode: A mix of modes and maps that randomly cycle through.
Later updates brought new class variations and maps as well as other game modes, such as Gnome Bomb, Vanquished Confirmed!, Suburbination, Taco Bandits!
As a result of the online-only nature of the game, Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners are required to have a Gold Membership in order to play the game. Also PC players are required to have an Origin account through EA to play.