Worms Reloaded
Review
As addictive and wonderful as the 1990s classic
by Chris Capel
reviewed on PC
We will stand and never run, stay until it’s done (cntd)
Single-player consists of customized matches versus the AI, the Campaign, Bodycount and Warzone. Campaign is the most fun, offering different types of challenges from a ninja rope race through to killing six AI worms with only one or two of your own. Bodycount gives you only one worm, and you have to see how long you can survive and how many enemies you can off before you die. Warzone is sort of straight team-against-team, but with increasing difficulty and health of the enemy.
There’s one thing that Team 17 have never got right though, much like Nintendo’s Mario Kart developer, and that’s fair AI. I’m sad to say that the AI in Worms Reloaded cheats just as blatantly as in the Amiga original. There are plenty of variations of AI to choose from (Vengeful, Reckless, Strategic etc), but in reality they just boil down to either “Stupid” or “Plants A Perfect Grenade Right On You While Impossibly Taking Every Bounce Into Account”. If they can’t hit you immediately they will either fire a bazooka round disregarding the landscape or any of their own worms being in the way, or they will just skip their go. There’s no strategy in AI battles, unless it is coming from you.
Though our friends may fall and our world be blown apart
After generating a random landscape using the Random Landscape Generator and the teams you want to see blown up, you are ready. Has much changed since I last played Armageddon a decade ago? Not really, no, and that’s a good thing as I suggested earlier. In the space of a single match – once I had worked out what everything was – I was back massacring annelids as if I had never been away.
Of course the “working things out” was the hard part. With the mass of weapons options available in a big joypad-friendly grid it is sometimes hard to work out what the hell is what. Identifying the Dragon Punch took me ages, and you would think the “Utilities” (non-lethal stuff like Ninja Rope, Jetpack etc) would be all grouped together. And why the hell can’t you change gameplay options in-game? I’m thinking Move Timer specifically, but once you are playing you can’t change much at all without going all the way back to the main menu.
The graphics are cute, flat and quite nicely detailed, albeit just really being Armageddon in a higher resolution. It has to be said that sometimes background objects can be confused with the destructible foreground. Music is all good simple fun as usual, and I’m hoping I will find the iconic Worm Song at some point.
We’ll strike with all our might, we’ll fight for what is right till the end
Of course the big elephant in the room, if you live in the UK as I do, is the price. For god knows what reason, the fairly-reasonable $18 has been directly converted to £18, which is closer to $30 when converted and just simply isn’t worth that for what is essentially a polish of an 11-year-old game. It is Steam Holiday Sale fodder for sure.
Being fair, Worms Reloaded is an absolutely fantastic multiplayer game still, incredibly simple to get into and yet fiendish to master like all the best games. If Team 17 are just creating the ultimate definitive 2D PC Worms game, I think they have pretty much succeeded.
However, if you don’t own any Worms games and can persuade a few friends to buy it, it will last you absolutely ages. The AI is atrocious as ever, and it is extremely annoying that you have to go through the Campaign to unlock some of the game’s best weapons. Nevertheless, what was a classic game in the 1990s remains exactly as addictive and wonderful in the 2010s. The cry can go up now – “we’ve won the war, again!”
8.3
fun score
Pros
Customization options are utterly insane
Cons
AI is atrocious
