Every weekend, Windows Central livestreams an Xbox One or Steam game for 1-2 hours and gives out free games to the cool people who join us during the stream. It's like a live podcast, only you also get to watch a game while chatting with our awesome readers and viewers!
Tonight on Beam, we'll be playing Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, the family-friendly 3rd-person shooter from EA. Garden Warfare is celebrating a holiday event right now, plus it just got an exciting new online split-screen feature. Read on for quick impressions, contest winners, and the full video replay of the livestream.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
The original Plants vs. Zombies was a zany tower defense game. After EA acquired developer PopCap, they followed up with a mobile-exclusive sequel and a much more action-packed spin-off called Garden Warfare. Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 is a bigger, better family-friendly third-person shooter featuring lots of competitive and cooperative goodness.
The zombies have overrun the town of Suburbia thanks to interference from the future. The war-torn city now functions as the game's hub world, with both factions occupying a camp on opposite sides of the map. From your home base, players can take on story-based solo quests, multiplayer-focused daily challenges, customize their characters, and more.
The first Garden Warfare was only really good as a competitive online game, but the sequel opens things up by making all modes available in single-player, split-screen, and online. The four-player co-op mode can now be played with zombies in addition to plants, adding some welcome variety. And 12-versus-12 online battles still offer plenty of frenzied competition.
Garden Warfare 2 recently received a major update that allows split-screen players to join in online games, opening up a whole new realm of fun for local players. And the current in-game holiday event gives players lots of ways to earn festive outfits and decorations. It's the perfect way to kill some time (and zombies) with family this holiday season!
The Contest
We streamed Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 for ~90 minutes tonight. During that time, we gave out a total of 6 Garden Warfare 2 game codes:
- 2 for Xbox One
- 2 for PlayStation 4 (North American accounts only)
- 2 for Origin (PC)
See the contest winners at the end of this post.
How to watch Beam livestreams
We're now streaming on Beam, Microsoft's interactive livestreaming platform. It provides some welcome improvements over Twitch, such as a cleaner website layout, built-in stream interactivity, and extremely low latency.
You can follow our channel at Beam.pro/WindowsCentral. From there, you'll be able to watch the stream and participate in chat directly from any web browser, including the Xbox One and Windows Phone browsers.
To receive email notifications when our Beam streams go live:
- First, follow our channel.
- Now select your profile from the top-right corner of the screen.
- Pick the Account option near the bottom of the menu.
- Go to the Notifications tab.
- Make sure Send me important email updates on the Beam platform is enabled. This option is labeled deceptively, but it's required for all forms of email notifications.
- Click or tap the Email box next to our channel name until a check appears. That's it!
- We highly recommend that you set a recurring alarm on your phone. Our weekend stream always starts at the same time (9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific), so the phone reminder can be very helpful.
Beam does not offer Xbox One or Windows Phone apps yet, so watching from the browser is the only option on Microsoft platforms. But Beam does offer apps on Android and iOS. Yes, that's a strange inequity. Native Xbox and Windows 10 support is coming though, so stick with us!
Future streams
Want to know what's next for Windows Central's weekend Beam programming? We stream a different game every Saturday (and sometimes Sunday). The stream always starts at the same time: 9pm Eastern (8pm Central, 6pm Pacific, 2am GMT). Over the next few weeks, we'll be streaming the following (schedule not finalized):
- December 24: Jackbox Party Pack 3. Join us for this special holiday party stream. Everyone can play along without owning the game, and we'll have extra prizes to give away!
- December 31: Little Acre, the beautiful adventure game coming to Xbox, PlayStation, and PC in December. Win a copy of your own!
We hope you'll tune in as often as you can! Set a recurring alarm on your phone so you'll always know when it's time for the stream to start.
Winners
These viewers are ready to give peace a chance... Not!
Xbox One
- Co0lzZz
- Dakrkplayer2
PlayStation 4
- Shawnsig
- tylerh1701 (!!!)
Origin
- drswoboda
- mase123987
Tonight's prizes provided by Electronic Arts. Thanks also to our stream moderators for keeping the peace and giving away the prizes!
Reader comments
Celebrate the holidays with family-friendly shooter Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
You forced my hand, looks like I now need to sign up for Beam. Have a good stream guys, will catch the recording.
Will try to make it tonight.
I will be there with Bells On...
Curious if they are still planning on making a Beam app for W10. Or if it will be incorporated into the Xbox app or something.
Beam has said there will be more information in the comming months. It was announced this last fall that beam will be integrated into windows and xbox with live streaming capabilities. We cant expect it to come in one second. I am sure with time a quality experiance will be availible :D
I'll be there pew pew pew~~
Just curious, what's the reasoning for a Christmas Eve stream? I know it lands on a Saturday but a lot of people will be busy during that time. I can't make it tonight either but have fun! :)
You just listed the reason. We'll miss the people who can't make it, though.
For me, that stream actually lands on Christmas Day. Should be lots of fun.
Same for me haha!
Well I'm looking forward to seeing some of this game :) See you all there!
Looks like fun. I'll be there.
Thanks EA for making my week end better then it started. Monday I was involed in a Chemical accient. I lucky had no injeruys. butj two my friends where injeruyed and one had died. But bright things I save my two friends that got hurt,my staff and workers in the plant we where cleaning.
Sorry for your loss. On the bright side you are probably not required to work during this particular holiday season.
Thanks for another great stream, see you all next time! :)
Thanks for streaming this fun game and letting us play with for a bit at the end. That was great!
Oh, I'm glad you got in! We'll have to play more soon. :)
It was another entertaining stream tonight. I had played a bit of Plants v Zombies 1, and was excited to see what Plants v Zombies 2 was all about.
I'd say they upped the ante quite a bit. Lots more content than in version 1. And the level design really took a step up too. The levels looked quite large. I do agree with some of the chatters that the open world design makes the menu system a bit more difficult, but it's not a game breaker.
The split screen and simultaneous multiplayer was quite a surprise. It like that a lot.
Good game, good stream, and thanks for the early gift from my secret Santa!
-David