2 Player Plants Vs Zombies Battle For Neighborville Switch

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Eversince Popcap was acquired by EA their focus has shifted away from simple yet well-crafted puzzle games and towards titles more befitting of their new owner's largely detested business practices. Hence why Plants Vs. Zombies has transformed from a lovable tower defense game into a multiplayer third-person hero shooter. At this point, I'm surprised they haven't figured out a way to turn Peggle into a battle royale.

I still long for the good old days where this was just a game about planting sunflowers to fend off screen door-shielded zombies. However, I can't deny that Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville is a well-made multiplayer title with a decent amount of charm. The only issue is that it doesn't have enough going for it to make it a must-have game let alone one that's worth playing on the Switch.

Battle For Neighborville is all about the large-scale war between the happy-go-lucky living plants and the goofy undead zombies. Much to my surprise, there is a single-player campaign to play through that has some semblance of a plot and quite a bit of comedic dialogue. Well, comedic in the sense that it's supposed to be funny, but aside from a few smirk-inducing lines, it's mostly insufferable. It's all jokes about old 80s fashion and cringe-worthy internet humor like yetis who hoard bling. If I wanted that brand of comedy, I'd peruse a few dozen meme posts over on Reddit.

For the most part, this campaign feels more like an elongated tutorial for the multiplayer mode. It mostly involves walking up to various silly NPCs, accepting a quest, and then fighting waves of zombies ending with a boss battle. It's a good way to get to know all of the various character classes so you're ready for the multiplayer, but it's not much more than that.

This particular franchise actually translates to a hero shooter pretty well since there's a variety of different plant and zombie character designs. On the plant side of things, you have classics like the Pea-Shooter or the zombie-devouring Chomper. Meanwhile, zombies get all kinds of wacky classes like pirates, superheroes, mad scientists, and roller-disco dancers. Each one has its own specific set of skills and attacks. Some are for up-close confrontations, some fire off rounds like machine guns, etc. There are also some classes that are designed for defending objectives and supporting other players.

As for game modes, there's Turf Takeover, which is the big 16 player mode where you're tasked with capturing or defending points and objectives; Garden & Graveyard Ops, which is essentially a Gears Of War-esque horde mode where you and your team fight waves of enemies; and a Weekly Event mode, that for this week was an 8v8 team deathmatch affair. Additionally, there's a big hub world where you can run around with other players, look at your challenges, and spend coins to purchase cosmetics, skills, or new characters. Speaking of those coins, they're all earned in-game. There are no microtransactions in this edition of Battle For Neighborville, which shocked the hell out of me.

The combat is solid, although I wasn't blown away. Technically there's nothing wrong with how this plays, but it doesn't do anything exciting or new. It's just an alright little shooter with extra abilities and not many modes to choose from. It pales in comparison to games like Overwatch or Apex Legends, which coincidentally are both available on the Switch and a lot more fun. It doesn't help that I'm not sure if there's going to be a considerable player base for this. Most of the matches I played didn't have many players actively participating. Instead, the rounds were filled with bots that made up the bulk of both teams. Although to be fair, these were pretty skilled bots. Most of the matches ended with them being the kill leaders or MVPs of their respective teams. So at least the A.I.-controlled players are pulling their weight if you can't find anyone else to play with.

The game looks and plays well with a stable framerate and some enjoyable cartoony levels. While I ragged on Battle For Neighborville's terrible humor, there's a lot of charm in the game's art design. The animations are fluid and imbue these characters with personality. The only downside is that if you're playing this in handheld mode you'll probably see quite a bit of pixelation. This game looks better in docked mode, but it's never going to look as good as it does on PC or any of the current-gen consoles. Of course, that shouldn't be a surprise if you're buying a Switch port of a game like this.

Throughout playing Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville all I could think about was how it's a real bummer that this is what Popcap has become. They now make frivolous multiplayer titles that don't have much of a hook outside of being kooky and based on one of their better past games. There's nothing wrong with Neighborville and I am both thankful and surprised that it wasn't full of loot boxes or other microtransactions. But after I stopped playing I didn't feel an overwhelming need to return to it. It's just an adequate shooter that doesn't stand out from the multitude of other competitive shooters. To make matters worse, EA basically cut the legs out from under Neighborville by releasing Apex Legends on the Switch earlier this month. Not only is that a better game, but it's also still being supported and it's free. Meanwhile, this game isn't receiving any future updates and will cost money. It's kind of a no-brainer which one is more worthy of your time.

Unless you really want to see an ear of walking corn fire machine gun rounds at a zombie dressed as a football player, Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville is far from the best option for a multiplayer shooter on the Switch.

A Nintendo Switch copy of Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville was provided to TheGamer for this review. Plants Vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville is available on Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The Plants vs Zombies game series has been around since 2009. It started off as a tower defense type game, but the new Garden Warfare series has evolved into a mix of third-person shooter and tower defense. Amazingly enough only one title has been released to a Nintendo console. The original Plants vs. Zombies appeared on the Nintendo DS handheld but the other titles have remained elusive until now which is really surprising considering this is a family friendly title. Plants vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville Complete Edition is now out on the Nintendo Switch. Having played this game on both the PC and Xbox One before I was curious to see how the game would run on the Switch and since it is called the Complete Edition see what extras were added to make it special.

Plants vs. Zombies: Battle For Neighborville may sound familiar to you because it originally came out on the 18th of October 2019 for the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Like the other titles in the Garden Warfare series, the Battle For Neighborville is primarily a third-person shooter with a few strategic tower defense challenges tossed in. If online battles are your thing you can play 8v8 multiplayer choosing between the plant and zombie teams and partying up with three friends if you want a cooperative experience. Though keep in mind all of your friends will need to have Nintendo Switch Online to accomplish this. Local co-op requires you all to have your own Switch system; there is no split-screen co-op available. If everyone does have their own system then you can play competitive mode and battle it out.

The multiplayer area of the game called Giddy Park has a ton of great modes to try out. Team Vanquish mode has every plant or zombie that is defeated count as a point, but if you have to be revived you will lose that point from the team score. First team to 50 points wins. Another mode called Suburbination is like capture the flag but has you trying to control three objectives and once you have all three you earn points faster to win. Garden and Graveyard Ops (depending on which team you are on) will have you teaming up to defeat the waves of enemies coming at you. There are seven different modes offering a huge variety of play that should definitely be checked out.

If you are playing the single-player adventure, you will be completing a huge variety of crazy quests like Boogie Beatdown. This requires you stop the zombies from trapping the plants causing them to dance all day. Why would they do this? So they are free to eat the brains of the humans uninterrupted. The story is silly and a ton of fun, especially when you have to collect cool looking clothes to dress up the lawnmower to trick the club bouncer. It sounds ridiculous but you just have to try it! Plus I love trying to shoot traffic cones off of the heads of zombies or the televisions they stuck their head into.

PopCap has filled the game with its signature sense-of-humour; the puns are plenty. Characters you interact with have names like Corny Corn, Land Phil, and Major Sweetie the sunflower who is the leader. Plants vs. Zombies has 23 characters both plant and zombie to select from. Each of the characters specialises in their own type of weapon and has their own unique special attack to use.

You can turn on aim assist for both the PvE and PvP mode which may be especially helpful with younger players. The Switch also offers touch menus and motion controls which make it feel similar to the controls in Splatoon if you are a fan of that.

Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville takes place after the events of Garden Warfare 2. The plants presumably won the battle for Zomburbia and trapped all of the zombies in a "Smell Jar". The plants once again had control of Suburbia, and humans did not have to worry about their brains being eaten until the zombies escaped. Now the Plants and Zombies battle once more.

There are new features that take advantage of the Nintendo Switch's capabilities, such as the ability to use motion controls to aim, along with the ability to interact with UI touch menus throughout the game using touch inputs like map zoom and more, assuming if the player plays on handheld mode.

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