
I'm a person who turns off the subtitles when going through a campaign, so essentially being forced to read the story while this goofy robot is yelling out incoherent grunts didn't exactly make for an enjoyable experience. Most of the early quests come from Dave Bot 3000, whose gibberish commentary was cute the first time I talked to him and progressed to being utterly infuriating. It all still boils down to the same thing: The zombies want to beat the plants and vice versa. Garden Warfare 2's upgrades come in the form of a convoluted quest system that has a rather boring, uninteresting story behind it. This became more of a problem as I took on harder enemies, resulting in a lot of yelling and a lack of desire to try and progress. The sunflower's shooting is fine, but even when trying to zoom in with L1, there are some major issues as the trajectory of the ammunition didn't seem to match up with the actual crosshairs. The aiming mechanic has its moments of good, but mostly I found it to be difficult on certain abilities. Each of the individual characters that can be unlocked have their own abilities, most of which are exactly the same as the first PVZ:GW game. While the combat itself is fine, there's almost nothing new from the previous game. The third-person camera angle was difficult to used to simply because in a world where first person shooters dominate the market, it's tough to adjust to seeing your character as well as the crosshairs in the middle. Opting for the Plants side, I stuck with the default character of Sunflower. It's a pleasant start to the game as it allowed me to get used to the mechanics of the game. In the middle is an open world map that can be jumped into without needing anything other than a character picked. The Plants protect the sunny side of the map and their garden while the Zombies are protecting the darker portion of the world. The premise of the game has evolved into that of a battlefield between the two factions. Not much has changed between the first and second Garden Warfare titles. While the first Garden Warfare game seemed to have a good handle on what it is, the second title in the new spin-off leaves me wishing for more. The franchise has evolved since then, going from a tower defense game to a hybrid between the original genre and a shooter.

The Plants vs Zombies franchise has come a long way since the simple tower defense game that found its way into gamers' hearts back in 2009.
