Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville came out in October 2019 as the third game in the Garden Warfare line, and it is the most scattered of the three. PopCap Vancouver built a third-person shooter about a war between plants and zombies, then filled it with open zones, collectibles and quests that have nothing to do with shooting. The game does two things at once and does neither of them cleanly.
Trailer, via Plants vs. Zombies.
Crazy Dave and Dr. Zomboss split the roster
The setup picks up after Garden Warfare 2. The plants won the fight for Zomburbia, locked the zombies in a Smell Jar and took Suburbia back. Then the zombies got out. That is the premise, and it is enough.
Players pick a side. The plants answer to Crazy Dave, the zombies to Dr. Zomboss. From there the game runs as a cooperative or competitive shooter, and it supports single player, multiplayer, co-op and split-screen across every mode.
The class system is where Battle for Neighborville makes its real argument. There are 23 customizable classes, nine of them new. They fall into four groups: attackers, defenders, supporters and swarm. Each team also gets a team play class that lets players of the same class merge into a combined form when they fight.
That merge idea is the most interesting thing in the game. It is also the one the game does least with.
Turf Takeover and Team Vanquish carry the competitive side
The competitive modes are familiar ground. Turf Takeover is objective-based. Team Vanquish is team deathmatch. There are more beyond those two.
None of them reinvent the shooter, and they do not need to. The classes give each match enough variety that the modes can stay conventional and still hold up, and the merging mechanic adds a wrinkle most team shooters do not have.
The problem is that the game keeps pulling attention away from the fight. The player-versus-environment open zones let you explore, hunt collectibles and finish quests. They are pleasant. They are also a different game sitting inside this one, and the split never fully closes.
The Switch port landed a year and a half later
Battle for Neighborville first appeared as an early access title in September 2019. The full release followed in October for PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One. A Nintendo Switch version did not arrive until March 2021.
That gap matters. By the time Switch owners got the game, the studio behind it was nearly done. PopCap Vancouver closed in 2021, and Battle for Neighborville was its last game.
The team that made this shipped it, watched it collect generally positive reviews, and then got shut down. The game is a studio’s final statement whether anyone intended it that way or not.
A shooter that keeps stopping to be something else
The open zones are the part of Battle for Neighborville that will divide people hardest. They give the game a slower, looser register. You wander, you pick things up, you finish small tasks. It is not bad. It is just not what the classes and the modes are built for.
The classes want a fight. The zones want you to leave the fight and go look at something. Both halves are competent. Neither half gets the full attention it deserves, and the seams show most in the modes that ask you to care about an objective while a collectible sits somewhere off to the side.
There is also the matter of how much of this is new. The shooter skeleton is inherited from Garden Warfare. The open zones are the addition. The merging class is the addition. Everything else is polish on a formula that already worked in 2014 and 2016.
The verdict: 7.1 of 10
Battle for Neighborville is a good game that never decides what it wants to be best at. The 23 classes, the four roles and the merge mechanic give it a competitive core with real depth. Turf Takeover and Team Vanquish are solid, and split-screen support across every mode is a genuine gift in a genre that keeps dropping it.
The open zones are the drag. They are not filler exactly, but they compete with the part of the game that has the most to offer, and the game never reconciles them.
What makes this one worth remembering is not the shooting. It is the timing. This is the last game PopCap Vancouver made. The studio closed the same year the Switch port arrived, and the game it left behind is a competent, likable, slightly overstuffed shooter that got generally positive reviews and then stopped existing as a living project.
That is the honest read. Battle for Neighborville is not the best game in the Garden Warfare line. It is the one that tried the most things, and the trying is visible in every mode. If you want a team shooter with split-screen and a sense of humor, it holds up. If you want a tight, focused competitive game, the open zones will bother you more than they should.
What the numbers say
- Title: Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville
- Developer: PopCap Vancouver
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- Release: Early access September 2019; full release October 2019
- Switch release: March 2021
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- Modes: Single player, multiplayer, co-operative, split-screen
- Classes: 23 customizable, nine new to the franchise
- Roles: Attackers, defenders, supporters, swarm
- Score: 7.1/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 8 outlets)
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