Worms Reloaded Review

27 Aug 2010 at 22:05:30 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (PC)

Guys? You've played Worms, right? Everyone's played Worms. Even my dear mother, whose experiences with gaming in the past 20 years has largely been limited to things that come free with Windows and Popcap's back catalogue, has played Worms. Heavily-armed cartoon annelids with squeaky voices blowing merry hell out of each other with silly weapons, in a turn-based setting. Right? We're all up to speed?

Right. Worms Reloaded dispenses with the 3D rubbish that tarnished the series, and is sticking with the familiar 2D blasting that we've seen, of late, in the Open Warfare subseries as well as Worms 2: Armageddon on Xbox LIVE Arcade. Armageddon's an excellent comparison to make, in fact, because Reloaded is pretty much a retuned version of that.

From the off, you've got a tutorial which does enough to help you understand the controls and rules of playing without spoiling all of the insane weapons for you, in addition to a smattering of single-player modes. Quick Game immediately drops you into a single-player round, while Custom Game lets you tweak rule configurations and teams to your liking; if you want a game with four teams of two worms each, with the ability to choose which worm you control each round, no ninja ropes, and everyone starts with a Concrete Donkey, that's where you'll head. Other than that, there's a 35-mission Campaign mode which gets predictably impossible as it nears its close, a campaign-for-lunatics called Warzone, and a survival mode called Bodycount.

These single-player offerings bear closer examination. Campaign doesn't just feature 35 matches in a row - while regular team vs team matches make up the majority of it, there are a load of other diversions hidden away in there. Some levels will give you 60 seconds to get to the end of a course using the Ninja Rope or the jetpacks, while others play out like The Impossible Machine, tasking you with using creative methods and a very limited supply of armaments to kill all of the enemy worms. It's entertaining enough until it gives you a vertical tower map, two worms against eight, and an AI that can make pinpoint shots with grenades that involve three ricochets as well as a roll through a crater, which I've pinpointed as the exact moment when the game becomes a frustrating exercise in trial and error.

Bodycount, meanwhile, gives you one worm and a host of respawning foes. The enemy starts out weak (10hp per worm, to begin with) but, as with Obi-Wan Kenobi, killing them only makes them more powerful. Every time a worm dies, a replacement beams in with more health. It's chaotic as hell and it doesn't take long before survival becomes very, very hard. It's also slightly repetitive, and not something you're going to spend a huge amount of time on after your first few goes.

The thing is – and you've played Worms before, so you know this – Worms was never about single-player. Single-player is a diversion. The real fun is in the multiplayer, and that's as true here as it ever was. Once you've created your team (with a variety of skin colours, hats, and a huge array of multi-lingual and comical voice banks available) you can pit yourself against your friends either on the same computer, or against the unwashed masses on the internet.

And it's brilliant. This is, absolutely, Worms with pitch-perfect balancing. I spent an hour last night playing with a group of American friends, and I haven't laughed so hard at a game in ages. Multiplayer Worms isn't about the successes; it's about the monumental screwups. Winning a game is nice, but losing a game because a grand plan went awry – your bazooka shot missed and collapsed a platform above you, dropping a mine on you that blasted you into another mine and an explosive barrel – is what makes this such an entertaining multiplayer game, particularly with friends.

All ...

Comment