Garden Warfare 2’s new community challenges are a good idea

Available in the latest free update

PopCap has followed up its last big Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 update, Trouble in Zombopolis, with a part two. The free update expands the Backyard Battleground open world with Delivery Time Challenges (races, essentially) and offers another way to earn stuff: Community Challenges.

These challenges are time-limited events in which all players can work together to collectively meet some goal — say, earning 15 million vanquishes — to unlock rewards like coins, packs, or “special items.” Each challenge has three reward tiers, and you can check everyone’s progress near the Town Hall or on this web page. It’s essentially just another way to keep people engaged (you have to physically log in and go claim your prizes), which is fine by me. Keep the numbers up!

You can glance over the full patch notes right here. It sounds like the game balance has shifted quite a bit since I’ve last played (and there are of course even more changes with this update), so I’ll be curious to see if I’ve fallen way behind the regulars. Given how many variant characters there are in Garden Warfare 2, I do not envy the folks working to keep things relatively fair.