Worms: Reloaded Review

Worms goes back very far, all the way back to 1995. This year, Worms celebrated 15 years, which is a huge achievement for Team17. Worms: Reloaded is the latest game in the Worms series, and updates the graphics and gameplay immensely since the very first game. The game is basically an expanded edition PC drop of the Xbox Live Arcade game, Worms 2: Armageddon.

Firstly, the game has many missions, meaning the player will have hours of fun. The gameplay keeps to the same type it has been, where the player, or players depending on if you are playing multiplayer, where they take it in turns to control the worms and you basically take out your opponents worms. You are on a timer, so you need to play your move as quickly as possible. Every time you deal damage to a worm, the players total health goes down. The winner is the first person to make the other player lose all their health. But as always, these are not ordinary worms, as they take out each other using all kind of weapons, which cause explosions, acid erosions and much more. There’s tonnes of weapons to pick from, and a couple more from the XBLA bunch. You have to be very careful to not to attack yourself by accident, as you will take damage and that turn will be over, giving the other team the advantage.

Along with the single player campaign, you can also play a quick match, play Warzone, which is where you can play the missions (and the missions you can select depends on the ones you have completed and the mission you are currently on) and basically the difficulty increases the more you play. As the description says: “ITS A FIGHT TO THE DEATH!”. And Body Count is interesting, which is where you are a one man team. You have 200 health, and the other worms have 10 health. You basically need to last as long as you can. Every time you kill a worm, another appears, or else the game might end in two turns. Perhaps less if you are that good. Once you reach 0 health, game over. There are tonnes of maps, which helps keep a nice variety in the game.

But wait, there is more! Along with all that, you can also create your own maps, where you can place tunnels, choose your landscape and more. There is a limit to some of the resources you can have, which is very sensible, or else the map would be complete chaos. But one thing that brings it down, is that there is no tutorial. You need to guess what everything does, even if the buttons are named. But what I do praise is the idea of a shop, where with all the money you receive from completing missions, tutorials and puzzles, you can unlock more weapons, more maps, and 5 bonus campaign missions.

The controls certainly takes a lot. You need to know your controls very well. One thing that bugged me much is the jump. It is increasingly difficult to get to a podium that is just “right there”. Back in the day, the jump was so easy to control, and now, not so much.

Overall, it’s nice to see that the game many of us grew up with is back. This game will certainly appeal more to a much younger audience, especially those who enjoy cartoon violence. I do worry that it might no longer appeal to people my age, because people have moved on and grown up and are into more “violent” stuff, but one thing it does bring back is nice memories.