Worms

THE BAD:
Nothing

SUMMARY:
Worms are normally timid creatures. Well, Team 17 gave them a work over and turned them into killing machines. You control a team of 4 worms and your aim is to blast the enemy teams of worms into oblivion with whatever weapons you can get your hands on, from rocket launchers to miniguns. This game operates on a turn based system.

For anyone who hasn’t played Worms, it’s a game played form a side-on view and you have to move your worms into the best place where you can hit the other worms. Some weapons cause an area of damage, and the closer the weapon hits the ground nearer a worm, the more damage it does. A direct hit on an enemy worm will usually result in 50 damage being caused, although some weapons cause up to 75 damage. Knocking an enemy worm into water/acid/fire or off the edge of the screen will kill them and remove them from play. If you manage to deplete the life points of a worm completely but they don’t go off the screen or into water then they pull a detonator out of nowhere and blow themselves up. This explosion is small but can cause damage to other worms so watch out.

Talking of weapons, there are plenty to choose from. There are bazookas, grenades, uppercuts, uzis, mines, dynamite, homing missiles, airstrikes and more besides. These weapons all have advantages and disadvantages so choosing which one is best for a situation is important. A lot of them have areas of effect damage so can be used to hit several worms at once. One thing that affects weapons that don’t hit instantly is wind. There’s a bar at the bottom of the screen, which tells you which way the wind is blowing and how strong it is. This is important and you need to factor it in when using certain weapons. All weapons can be used to destroy scenery. This can be very helpful if you are trying to remove some land that other worms were using to protect them. The best weapon for hitting a bunch of worms is undoubtedly the airstrike. Not only is it easy to direct where you want it, it isn’t affected by the wind and does a fair amount of damage. This attack is wasted on just one or two worms though.

Besides the weapons there are also other things you can do during your turn. You can teleport your worn to anywhere on the map, either nearer the action or to a hard-to-reach hiding place. You can also use a bungee rope to drop down large gaps. If you fall down a large distance then your worm dives into the ground head first and you lose the rest of your turn. There’s also a ninja rope for you to scale places you can’t simply jump to. And there are also girders for you to bridge gaps or protect yourself. Every so often a plane will drop a crate onto the field which contains a weapon. You can also blow up the crate however to cause massive damage to any nearby worms.

There are also plenty of options in the menu. You can adjust the amount of hit points each team has, limit the number of times a weapon can be used in a match or remove it entirely. There is also a league table for you to keep track of how everyone does in the matches as well with statistics to go along with it.

While the latter Worms games may have had better graphics or more weapons, this one remains the best in my opinion. The basic concept was so simple but executed very well. I can’t actually think of any downsides to this game because it’s just so addicting and entertaining. The option to have up to 4 teams battling it out makes it ideal for when you have friends round, and this game is a timeless classic.