Worms – A retrospective
Hello and welcome to Nostalgia World this week. Apologies about not posting up last week, this little thing called real life got in the way and by the time I had some free time, it was Monday of this week, so I figured I’d post this up this week in the usual time, instead of on Monday. As that would have been weird. Anyway, this week, I’m doing a retrospective view of the Worms series, up until and including Worms 3D, because I can. Also because Worms 3D, whilst being somewhat recently released, is pretty much the end of the series for me.
Green, radioactive water. Yum.
We’ll start with Worms 1, released in 1995 for the Amiga. This is the start of the franchise, as you may expect, and for me, isn’t the best game in the series. That title is reserved for Worms Armageddon, but more on that later. The core game play is established here, with multiple worms blasting seven shades of hell out of each other with different weapons. It does require skill to do so, as ammo is limited for some weapons and also needs you to calculate how much power to use with some weapons, like the bazooka.
This artillery game play is the main basis of the entire series up until Worms 3D, but we’ll cover that one later. It’s a testament to how well the core game play works that it wasn’t changed throughout the game series until the 3D versions that came out in the 00s, and even then, it was retained for the 2D versions and remakes of the earlier games with nary a major adjustment. Some of the physics have been tweaked over the years, but the game play has remained the same, essentially.
The homing pigeon of doom. Or at least, when it manages to connect with its target.
Worms 2 introduced a slightly more cartoony style of graphics that became more commonplace in the series as it progressed. The weapons were also updated here, with a lot more super weapons and cartoonish ultimate weapons, like the Holy Hand Grenade and the Sheep strike. A lot of customisation was also available for the first time, such as round times, worm retreat time after you placed explosives, the wind strength, and even the rate at which the land would sink in sudden death mode. Such customisation is a great feature, allowing you to make massively customised games that haven’t really been seen anywhere else, as you can also decide what weapons to have and not have, as well as making your own team.
Also included in Worms 2, that is a latter feature of every Worms game, is the random level generator. This does a Ronseal, exactly what it says on the tin, by generating random levels for you to play on, thus making the game virtually unlimited. Also included is a basic level creator, where you can design the layout of the level yourself, if you so want to.
Customised worms kick arse.
Released in 1999, in my opinion, Worms Armageddon is the pinnacle of the Worms series. It does everything that Worms 2 does, but just a bit better. The core game play is still ever-present, with both singleplayer and multiplayer modes present from Worms 2, and virtually everything from Worms 2, except done just a little bit better, with a slightly more cartoony style of graphics, and just more over the top stuff that the Worms series does very well.
I had this for the PS1, and still do have the disc for it, which is the only physical Worms game I still have that runs. I’ve also got the next game in the series, Worms World Party, but that’s for my computer, and as my computer is currently too powerful to run it properly, I can’t play Worms World Party any more, so I have to make do with either Armageddon for the PS1 or the Xbox 360 remake that I have. However, as this is the best game in the series, I can certainly make do with it, and will often sit down for a quick game of blasting the everlasting hell out of the enemy worms whenever I’m frustrated.
Yep, that worm is a stupid worm
Last of the 2D games before we hit the remakes, is Worms World Party. It played exactly the same as every other Worms game, and some reviews argue that it feels like an expansion pack to Worms Armageddon, which I think would be fair to say is accurate, as it plays exactly the same as Armageddon. There are singleplayer levels against increasingly harder enemy teams, and the usual multiplayer suspects of customisable games. Since there’s nothing new to really add, I’ll just leave the 2D games on a high note, and descend into the murky quagmire of turd that is the 3D Worms games.
Le sigh. I hate this game. I really do.
And so starts the Worms 3D, and the end of the good part of the series. The 3D games take everything that was good about the 2D games, like the skill in using weaponry, and being able to strategise and hide yourself away in nooks and crevices or build your own bridges and structures to hide yourself in, and take a massive dump all over it in spectacular fashion. Which is a shame, as I quite liked the 2D games if you hadn’t gathered from the above bit of writing.
There is no real skill involved in the 3D game, its mostly pot-luck as to whether artillery-style weapons and bazookas hit, because you’ve got no real way of judging the power you need. This proved very frustrating to me whilst playing with one of my old housemates, as the one time I did play it with him, I tried to apply 2D logic and failed at it spectacularly, and resorted to just sulking at the failure of a game. My housemate also seemed to struggle with it as well, and as far as I can tell, he was having the same problems as me, because he’s quite good on the 2D Worms, as we used to play it all the time at university. That, and Rainbow Six Vegas 2, which was ridiculously hard, but that’s not really a retro game.
In conclusion to this quick recap of the entire Worms series, if you’ve not played the 2D part of the series, you should, now. It’s available on virtually every games console that I can think of as well as your phone, so you really have no excuse if you’ve not played it. If you have played it, congratulations, I really hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn’t, I will have to drop a concrete donkey on your head, repeatedly. Avoid the 3D games, as they’re really not good and do the series absolutely no justice. And with that said, GO KILL SOME WORMS NOW!
