Finally an end to the dry-spell of reviewing on my part, I was handed the opportunity to review Worms Reloaded on the PC and I jumped at it like a shot. I have always been a massive fan of the Worms series, all the back to 1995 when the first was released for the PC. Now things have changed in the series, the wackiness has got wackier, the graphics have got cartoonier and thankfully that little flutter that Team 17 had with 3D gameplay has been taken out back and humanly put down.
Worms Reloaded
Developer: Team 17
Price: £17.99 (Steam)
Platform: PC (reviewed)
The latest installment in the series is Worms Reloaded and to be honest if one was to place a screenshot of Reloaded next to say, a screenshot of Worms Armageddon then the immediate differences wouldn’t be obvious to the eye. The standard formula of a Worms game is that the player makes a team and then proceeds to kill other teams which are either AI or Player controlled in a variety of crazy landscapes, but that’s the formula that made Worms the series it is and I’m thankful that they’ve remembered that.
Single player mode is reasonably expansive for a game like Worms, there’s six gameplay types ranging from; a standard campaign mode which is 35 levels long and becomes frustratingly unfair towards the end, two gameplay modes which seem to be general survival scenarios, a training mode and quick and custom games which actually seem to be the same as local multiplayer settings. The campaign mode is fun but frustrating, which is what I look for in a campaign – no point in it being too easy now. Dotted throughout the standard kill everyone matches, there are a few ‘puzzle’ scenarios which are incredibly easy to solve but are quite funny to pull off. This inclusion of the ‘puzzle’ challenges does help to break up any tedium that a game like Worms can create.
One of the features that newer Worms games have had is the ability to fully customise a team of your own by picking a voice set, gravestone, victory dance etc. I of course created the same team that I always do, the original Team 17 team from Worms 1 and this time I gave them all flat caps and the ‘cricket’ voice in order to make it seem like they’re from Yorkshire. This time however I think they went too far in this regard, there must be in excess of 30 different voice sets and I think they should have created a greater variety of phrases for a smaller number of sets because the repetition of phrases does start to grate after a prolonged period of time. On the subject of sounds and music of the game, the background music during actual gameplay is very good if not a tiny bit over-the-top. I think, however, that the music is deliberately over-the-top and seems to parody the large budget musical scores of games such as Halo and Modern Warfare 2.
The choice of weapons is a major part of any Worms title, the crazier and more dangerous a weapon is the more you’ll want to play with it. Thankfully the majority of the more normal weapons are generally unlimited, whilst the more insane weapons such as; Holy Hand Grenade, Concrete Donkey, Buffalo of Lies and Armageddon are sparse enough to make using them incredibly fun but not over baring. The sheer amount of weapons at your disposal would even make Ron Schmeits run away in fear. The only problem with having so many weapons is that your AI counterparts are almost always able to pull off shots with grenades and bazookas that are not even in the spectrum of thought for most normal players. Saying this, during the early missions the AI enemy had this strange habit of taking themselves out allowing me to sit back with a fruity cocktail and a good book – this doesn’t last though.
Overall then I think Worms Reloaded is definitely a good game because it’s very fun to play both single player and with friends, however I do think that you have to like the Worms series going into it to actually enjoy it and the frustration caused by the single player campaign will but some people off. Seeing as it’s the type of game that has no definitive ending, the replay value is very high.
Final Word
Worms Reloaded is a return to form in my view for the Worms series, and I think at £17.99 on Steam is a good game to have for when you get tire of FPS’s and the like
– Monstervine Rating: 4/5
