Even the best multiplayer games aren’t immune to losing their playerbase. Mass Effect 3’s Galaxy at War. Gears of War 3’s Beast Mode. Splinter Cell’s Spies vs Mercs. There are so many incredible multiplayer experiences lost to time as their platforms become obsolete, servers get shut down, or people move on. Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 was, for a time, one such game. With counts that rarely exceeded 1,000 active players on Steam, the community is steady, albeit small, but now a whopping 90% off sale has seen GW2 hit its highest peak since launch, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.
If you’ve never played Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2, it takes the iconic tower defense series and turns it into a third-person multiplayer game. You take up arms as either the flora or undead, blasting corn, footballs, cactus spikes, and a plethora of zombified sci-fi weapons at each other in all manner of matches.
With plenty of improvements over the first Garden Warfare, like the battlegrounds hub world, new game modes, extra characters, and solo quest activities, GW2 has always been a great experience, even if it has been somewhat lost to time.
Despite that, Garden Warfare 2 is currently at its highest-ever Steam player peak, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. As of writing the game has 8,331 concurrent players, which is almost double the launch peak of 4,888. So if you’ve never played it, or just don’t own it on Steam, and fancy diving in, now’s the time.
Garden Warfare 2’s renewed success has been putting a lot of stress on the servers, however, with the GW2 subreddit offering up some advice in a new post.
“The best solution at this time is to try the less popular regions like NA West, Asia, Australia, etc,” ‘Endermen295’ writes. “The ping/latency/lag may be higher in those regions for most, but you will have a significantly increased chance of finding a lobby.”
If you miss the heyday of the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer mode as much as I do, Garden Warfare 2 still offers a lot of single-player and co-op content that expertly brings the joy of ME3 back. You can either play the multiplayer modes or dive into plenty of single-player missions, so when the hype dies down and the current sale ends, there are still ways to play GW2. Sequel Battle for Neighborville is also dirt cheap and having a resurgence, but Garden Warfare 2 is much busier right now.
Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2 is currently 90% off, so expect to pay just $2.99 / £2.49 until Tuesday July 30. You can pick up the game right here.
If you’d rather not leave your wallet a little lighter, there are loads of free Steam games and free PC games to play instead.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.