Worms Reloaded Review [PC]

Posted August 31, 2010 by Bobby Foster.

Forgive me for being crude, but I always thought playing any version of Worms by yourself feels a little like masturbation. You’re not necessarily having a bad time, but there’s always a nagging feeling that you’d be having more fun if there were at least one more person involved.

Worms Reloaded does more than any previous Worms game to try and help you have the best you-know-what you’ve ever had. There are several single-player game types to choose from, of which Body Count – where you’re given one tough worm to fight off wave-after-wave of weaker opposition – is probably the best. And in the campaign mode every third level is a ‘puzzle’ which, despite not requiring much by way of serious thought, at least helps to break up the monotony of round-after-round of four-versus-four action.

Yet anyone thinking that Team 17 might have taught their AI to realistically mimic human behaviour in the 15 years since the original Worms will be sadly disappointed. Just like that very first game on the Amiga, your computer opponents range from the bizarrely indecisive to the impossibly accurate from turn-to-turn, with no discernible explanation for either extreme. While it’s true that human players are equally capable of amazing or terrible judgement from time to time, the problem with the computer’s aim is that it’s so completely binary. You rarely see anything other than a total miss or a perfect hit, which completely undermines the strategic, margin-weighing way Worms has been designed to be played.

This means that getting other people involved is still the only way to experience the game at its chaotic best. And I probably don’t need to waste too much of your time telling you what to expect: this is near enough the same game as it’s always been, but with high-resolution graphics, a load of extra weapons, and a plentiful supply of game types.

As usual, the level of customisation possible should satisfy even the most pernickety of players. In addition to the many game modes and weapons available, the versatile level editor means you could easily spend as much time setting up a game as playing it if you so wished. The main drawback is that if you want to have access to the most powerful weapons – like banana bombs or holy hand grenades – then you’re going to have to plough a good few hours into playing the game by yourself to earn the points needed to unlock them.

Crucially, though, it’s a game that’s aged well – despite the scarcity of changes it’s undergone since its inception. You still have those beautiful moments when someone who’s been impossibly slick with a ninja rope goes on to mess up something simple and plummets to their death, taking out two of their own team members on the way. It’s still possible for one perfectly judged (or completely fluked) move to turn the course of the battle. And underneath its cutesy exterior, hit-and-miss humour and elements of chance, there’s still a surprisingly tactical game.

Yet compared to the 800 Microsoft points that’s being charged for Worms 2: Armageddon on the 360, is the £17.99 currently being charged on Steam a fair price? No. There’s simply not that much meaningful extra functionality here, and if you own any games console from the past decade, you’ll have a version available to you for far less that includes the key ‘easy to play on a sofa with friends’ feature that this ultimately lacks. Unless you’re a total Worms fanatic, or perhaps spend more time with your friends on Steam than in your living room, then you’d be better off waiting for the inevitable discount a few months down the line.