Briefly: We already know how much fun PopCap’s Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is (it’s an absolute blast), and tomorrow the game is set to get even better.
PopCap has announced the first piece of free DLC for the game, which they’re calling the ‘Garden Variety DLC Pack’. The pack will include a stellar chunk of new content for the budget-priced multiplayer title. Here’s the breakdown, straight from PopCap:
Major Features:
– New Map: Chomp Town – playable in Garden Ops, Team Vanquish and Gnome Bomb. Yes Crazy Dave IS riding a Chomper… Why??? Because he’s CRAAAZYYY!
– New Game Mode: Gnome Bomb – be the 1st team to destroy all three gardens or graveyards with the explosive new Gnome Bomb.
– Pirates have invaded Port Scallywag and Sharkbite Shores in Garden Ops
– New Abilities for all characters – new character abilities are tucked away in the sticker shop (hint: Crazy Pack and higher are your best bet to get them! Supremium Pack, Incredi-Plant Pack & Vengeful Zomboss Pack have the highest chances to get them)
– 125 new customization items added to the sticker shop – spread across all characters/rarities…
– Added Doom-shroom potted plant consumable for plants
– Added Barrel Pirate, Treasure Map Pirate consumable for zombies
Minor Features:
– Improved reliability for the hold (B) interaction wheel – when reviving, building turrets etc….
– Added Bonus Score for playing Garden Ops Solo or with a friend
– Added a min player requirement to each game mode
– Tweaked various hats to improve overall visibility
– Added improved audio to slow firing weapons to queue players when next shot is available
Gameplay Balance Changes:
Alternate Abilities
– Gameplay tuned and balanced all new alternate character abilities to be balanced with existing abilities
Corn Artillery
– Some slight tweaks to gameplay and vfx for Corn Artillery at end of Main Street in Gardens & Graveyards
Giga-Gargantuar
– Increased damage radius for pole slam
Mystic Flower
– Some improvements to aiming
Bug Fixes:
– Various stability & performance improvements
– Toned down some vfx that were making things hard to see
– Fix for players that were sometimes not getting their level up card packs and re-awarded those card packs to any impacted by this
– Fix for characters able to spawn as a character on the opposing team but still be assigned to the previous team
– Disabled 2 players able to spawn garden at same time in Garden Ops
– Fixed Engineer default Handlebars not being selectable once changed in customization
– Fixed Peashooter smiley tattoo not being able to be acquired in sticker packs
– Some general UI cleanup and polish
– Fix for AI Engineers not building teleporters properly in Garden Ops
– Fix to prevent Crazy Dave & Zomboss from flying through shark teeth in Sharkbite Shores
– Various Map fixes to prevent players getting stuck and getting incorrect out of bounds messages when in bounds
– Some Chomper animation clean up and polish
– Added proper title to boasts on leaderboard
– Fix for not getting extracted in Garden Ops when piloting drone standing in extraction circle
– Fix for tallnut cannon not vanquishing players directly in front of it
– Toned down challenges requiring players to plant Rare and Super Rare Consumables
– Fix to disable other items able to be worn at same time as Astronaut Scientist helmet
– Fix in split screen for zoom getting momentarily stuck when using abilities
– Zoom fix issue when near potted plant or grave dirt that would kick players out of zoom when exiting range of pot/grave dirt
– Fix for bossmode counting as player slot – allowing players to switch teams making teams unbalanced
– Stats fix for total coins earned not tracking properly on individual characters
– Fix for out of bounds message sometimes not disappearing if player dies out of bounds in split screen
– Fix for potato mines sometimes still being active once destroyed for a few seconds
– Fix for tombstone looping zombies forever when playing coop in single player and the tombstone challenge failed
– Fixed exploit in bossmode where a player could collect infinite suns before the garden was planted in Garden Ops
– Fix for Engineer Jackhammer that would stick out of engineer when chomper eating engineer gets vanquished before animation was complete
– Fix for some characters not playing their reload animation client side
– Fix for Camera sometimes detaching from character when being shot from cannon in Driftwood Shores Gardens & Graveyards mode
– Fix for Bags of Coins and diamonds coming up in slot machine in Garden Ops sometimes not awarding correct amount
– Fix for Black screen sometimes being displayed joining at a specific point during post round cinematics
– Fix for when character select screen would go under the world and look bad
– Fix for vanquish icon sometimes displaying inconsistently
– Fix for interactable yellow sparkles sometimes not playing on the correct item and generally being unreliable
– Garden Ops fix for Bossmode player looking like unassigned player in leaderboard
– Prevent player from being able to revive when vanquished out of bounds
– Southpaw button layout option did not work properly for drones and has been corrected
– Fixed responsiveness of weapons/abilities after spawning (there were a few seconds of limited input)
– Fixed video audio sometimes not getting turned off when skipping initial videos before reaching title menu
Those sound like some nice changes. It’s great to see that the game still hasn’t introduced micro transactions of any type (being an EA published title, it’s still nearly expected). The only thing that I’m really hoping that we see in the future is an expanded split-screen mode, as right now, it’s pretty lame.
You can preview the DLC via the video below, and let us know if you’re excited!
http://youtu.be/YyyZaiz71x4