[Playing…] Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare

We premiere the section Playing… in ComboGamer. In this space, each editor will present their opinion on those titles they have been playing with the aim of making them known and recommending them or not, as well as sharing feelings and experiences with others. The starting ticket Playing… It's my turn, and although I could talk about timeless classics that walk between the lines of myth and cult (ahem, Final Fantasy VII...), the most sensible thing to do is to break the bank for a game that escapes gafapastismo and playable mechanisms that require a lot of brains. I talk about Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, that game of bad-tempered plants and vegetarian zombies.

It would be absurd to say that I have no prejudices when faced with certain situations in my daily life. I have them and so do you, to a greater or lesser extent. And the same thing probably happens to us in front of the screen. In the same way that I would be reluctant to play products like YearWalk If I only had the four captures that present him, there will be people to whom the words Call of Duty either FIFA cause hives. And I feel for them deeply. I understand that the formula is broken, that it is not worth buying the new installment each year if the content they offer is so limited, but it is also true that as a player I am not always looking for transcendental adventures or ideas that invite the most absolute reflection. That would be, frankly, exhausting. That's why my first sensations when seeing Garden Warfare They were strange. Where was the frenetic tower defense that we knew? Why turn an unmistakable game into something less than a copy of titles that we criticize so much? There, friends, was my first prejudice that I could only get rid of by checking out at Origins.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare It is fun, casual and as fresh as the vegetables in the game themselves. Observing it from the outside arouses sympathy and from the inside even more. If more realistic shooters like Call of Duty They test our skill on the battlefield, Garden Warfare Create your own game climate by disguising equally hackneyed elements but under a personal appearance. There is no blood, no supervitamined soldiers, not even excessive explosions; but if they propel peas or pipes at you you are dead. The metagame is very similar to what we are used to in the genre, with two sides and different classes to choose from, each with their own arsenal and abilities. When you have played a couple of games, all you have to do is give up and accept that yes, that PopCap Games has successfully managed to convert the Plants vs. Zombies original in a kind of genuine shooter.

Electronic Arts has found the formula to make an online multiplayer-only game attractive and long-lasting. Do you remember how it works titanfall And its card system to improve certain characteristics in the games? Garden Warfare It is along the same lines, with a store in which we can invest the money we earn in combat by buying envelopes with trading cards that allow us to customize our characters or acquire new weapons. The customization is such that playing in crowded settings ensures that you do not see two identical plants or zombies, with fire sunflowers, hipster zombies or multicolored carnivorous plants. It's interesting because although some elements only influence appearance - don't expect that by changing your little plant arms for killer pots you're going to create some kind of plant Transformer - others do affect statistics. And believe me when I tell you that a zombie with rugby equipment can become even more dangerous depending on the upgrades.

It all sounds absurd and the truth is that when you are immersed in the dynamics of the game it seems even more so. But in that strange entropy everything is strangely well predisposed and it does not give the sensation that chance determines victory or defeat. Without going any further, there are skills that are ineffective in the hands of an inexperienced player, but for another profile of users they are essential. I'll give you a personal example and it is my clumsiness controlling Cactus, the sniper on the plant side, and his Garlic drone ability (if the idea that garlic drones exist doesn't make you want to give the game a chance... I don't know what to do!). By deploying the drone you can fly around the entire stage and shoot small needles that, although they take little health, help you visualize the stage and even kill some unsuspecting person who is not very attentive to the sky. However, a couple of hits and the garlic will be destroyed, thus wasting a few seconds that could be crucial for your team.

And if we talk precisely about group feeling, the truth is that Garden Warfare It more than meets that premise. As soon as we enter a game we will hear almost a dozen people speaking in the voice chat in an unintelligible way as if they had a potato in their mouth. They are not understood, they speak other languages, but They help give the feeling of being more at a festival than at war. I suppose there will be someone who uses said chat to propose strategies, although I am not going to deceive you, I have not found it yet. Between screeching children's voices, animal sounds and various interferences, the teams are designed in such a way that you want to kill your own to make them shut up. It is true that there is the option to silence them, but it is a shame that you have to enter the menu during each game and it cannot be set automatically. What are we going to do to him?

Garden Warfare would be on a plane similar to Team Fortress 2 because of how addictive its proposal is. Yes, I know that TF players will be throwing stones at me, but I will try to explain the reasons why I make such a statement. The main thing is the variety of game modes, which cover everything from the classic team combat or capturing the bases to more horny ones like Gnome Bomb, in which each team has three points to defend and the players must get a bomb gnome that appears randomly on the stage to take it to one of the enemy bases and have it explode. All the modalities are designed to encourage strategies and if you go without regard for your objective, prepare yourself for a horde of players who will not hesitate to pepper you with shots.

The second element that makes you smile when thinking about Garden Warfare is the richness of the scenarios. I deeply hate that in shooters you have to go through closed environments that take advantage of the corners of the hallways to set up ambushes. That's good but it's tiring. In Plants vs. Zombies todo despierta una sensación tan agradable como mortífera si no te haces con el ambiente que te rodea. Barcos pirata, parques, mansiones… Da igual dónde se dispute la partida, porque todos los mapas son lo suficientemente amplios como para poder desarrollar tu propio estilo de juego. Mientras que los lanzaguisantes y zombis soldado pueden acampar en los tejados de las casas esperando al enemigo, otros pueden aprovechar los recovecos del escenario para acabar con los oponentes por sorpresa.

Llegados a este punto da igual ser planta o zombi. O mejor dicho, importa todo. Ambos poseen clases diferenciadas entre las que seguro se encuentra la tuya predilecta. Y si nos cansamos del multijugador por bandos, lo mejor es unir fuerzas en el apartado Operaciones de Jardín, una suerte de modo Horda como el de Gears of War pero pasado por el filtro personal del juego. Aquí todos los jugadores unen fuerzas como plantas para hacer frente a múltiples oleadas de zombis controlados por la IA que intentan comerse nuestro jardín. Si esto os parece poco, preparaos para las rondas especiales en las que habrá que acabar con Yetis, zombis macarras o la incorporación de la última actualización gratuita: el vampiro-zombi Barón von Murciélago. Yo ya me las he visto y deseado para vencerle hasta llegar a la conclusión de que las muertes saben mejor cuando lo hacen personajes con tal diseño.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare es entrañable y fascinante porque no te intenta convencer de algo que ni es ni pretende ser. No soy objetivo cuando digo que una de sus grandes bazas y que me obliga a hablar de él es lo encantador que resulta todo. Me ocurre como si un amante de los gatos se encontrara en la calle varios de estos felinos. Sin quererlo siente el deber de recogerlos y darles un hogar. En mi caso no encontré Garden Warfare en la calle, sino en Origin y no lo pude dejar escapar. Tanto las plantas como los zombis del juego son monos -sí, hablo como una niña que defiende a los ponis- y una vez superada esa primera fase de seducción sabe darte amor con sus mecánicas jugables. Desde la semana pasada el juego está disponible en PS3 y PS4, sumándose así a otras plataformas como Xbox One, 360 y PC. Ahora sí que no hay excusa para que no te coman el cerebro y dejar que estas agradables plantas siembren en ti la semillita del buen gusto.