Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will bring hilarious firefights (interview)

It’s about time we got a funny shooter. We spent some time this week with Electronic Arts’ PopCap Games to play a demo of the multiplayer-only Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare shooter coming Feb. 18 on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles. The game is a satire of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and it’s loaded with humor. The close combat game pits plants, who are more stationary and defensive, against the offensive but slow and dim-witted zombies.

The fun  isn’t its realistic first-person shooter combat. It’s in the goofy characters and the zany customized weapons that they can use against each other. It’s a lot more like Valve’s Team Fortress 2 team shooter than anything, particularly since the battle arenas are smaller in size. We interviewed Garden Warfare producer Brian Lindley. He told us the priorities were humor, accessibility, and depth. Here’s an edited transcript of the interview.