Worms: Armageddon

Turn based strategy has done well in the modern age thanks to X-com, The Civilization series and The Worms games. Worms was a staple of my childhood. It ran on just about anything, had ports to every platform imaginable and only needed 1 device for 4 people to play on, since you passed the device to whoever had their turn next.

Worms: Armageddon has been considered to be one of the greatest in the series and the most well known of the original family so let’s see if it holds up today.

Sound:

The sound is nice, there is a simple little background loop that fits the tone. There is a small sound of wind blowing but the water doesn’t make any sound unless something falls into it at which point it is a little underwhelming but it does fine.

The worms have voices/accents that you can pick for each team and they all do a great job because they have this high pitch that makes all the Worms sound innocent even though they are all mass murdering little cunts.

The weapons have sounds that fit them, the bazooka has a powering up sound, the dynamite fuse plays before it goes bang and the mines have a little beeping sound when activated. The weak point with the weapon sounds is that the explosive sounds are muffled.

Graphics:

From as far as I can remember, the Worms games have had cartoony graphics and Worms: Armageddon is no exception. This is good since these kinds of graphics grow old gracefully and as a result these games are good to look at even 20 years later.

The game started in a really low 4:3 resolution but that didn’t matter since you can change it in the menu. The only problem is that it doesn’t apply to the menus, only ingame.

The levels are brightly coloured so you have no problem telling things apart. The wind has little particles in it, so you can always tell which way it is blowing without having to look at the wind direction indicator. The weak point in the world is how destroyed environments, especially the edges all look the same but that’s probably me being nitpicky.

The worms themselves look cute as all hell, they look straight out of some anime and you just want to pet them but remember they are mass murdering cunts. The colouring above the worms shows which team they are on and that is really helpful since the colours are all chosen well so that they don’t even look remotely identical. All the weapons look really cartoony too, if you think of weapons from old cartoons like Road Runner or Bugs bunny you probably have a nearly perfect idea of how the weapons look in Worms.

Gameplay:

The Worms games are turn based last man standing games. Each player has a team of 1 to 8 worms with up to 6 teams taking part. That’s a maximum of 48 worms per match. The last team standing wins, the core is simple enough.

The matches themselves take place in either pre-generated or randomly generated environments, so most of the time it’s a new surface to play on. The positions of the worms in each level is set to random, though you can change that so that you place each worm. Since the environment can be destroyed the environment you are playing on along with the positions of your worms can either make you or break you.

The game has a ton of options for you to edit pre-match like timers for matches, drop rates of weapons, weapon loadouts and so on. While most of the time you won’t change these options it’s nice that they are there so you and your friends can mess around to make the matches more interesting.

To kill the other teams the game gives you an imperial fuck-ton of weapons (with more hidden in crates). To kill other worms you can either bring their health to 0 or find a way to shove them in the water, this makes you think, since shooting a worm in the face might not always be the best idea. An example is – if a worm is on a slope, you can aim just behind them and watch them slide down the slope to their watery graves.

Finally, the weapons are a joy to use. All of them have their own little quirks, while some of them are just tools that do damage as well while some are just pure utility. There are some really strange weapons too like the super sheep that is a sheep that starts walking then when you hit fire again it takes off and you can control it in flight. Not all weapons act the same, some of them are single use and then finish your turn while some of the utility like weapons let you play after using them. If I had to talk about all the weapons here then this review would be the longest review I would ever write, so just trust me when i say the weapons are good.

Conclusion:

The problem I have with Worms: Armageddon (and most Worms games for that matter) is that they are okay to below average time wasters when alone, but at the same time are unbeatable fun when friends are playing. Me and my group have a drinking game where we take a sip everytime our worms are hurt, and take a shot when we lose a worm. The turn-based gameplay is just amazing for a casual gaming session.

If you have friends who come over often, then I would recommend Worms: Armageddon for around $5 or ₹200 otherwise skip it.