Worms Reloaded Review

I'm a big fan of the original Worms series. Even though the game was a tried and true format (think Gorillas or Scorched Earth as earlier examples of artillery games) Worms brought character to the game with the cute voice sets you could pick plus it had arguably better graphics. After Worms and Worms 2, Team 17 went through a period where they developed many 3D Worms games of questionable quality. Thankfully, they've returned to their roots in their most recent instalment, Worms Reloaded.

Sound (4/5)
A lot of voicesets have been added with many of the old favourites that you remember. Audio is definitely the strong point of the Worms series and it is good to see that it is still the case. Handel's Messiah gets played when the Holy Hand Grenade is thrown, suicidal exploding sheep "baa" as the pounce around the map, and an organ playing a home run ditty as you hit an enemy worm off a ledge with a baseball bat!

The only criticism I could make is that some voicesets don't really have that much variety in what is said. As a consequence some voicesets are very annoying and will probably never get used.

Music (3/5)
The background music is alright and is typical of Worms games - however the original Worms theme is nowhere to be heard which I think is a real letdown. Most people who play Worms Reloaded are going to be fans so why not reward them? :)

Worms Theme

Worms World Party Theme

Graphics (3/5)
Graphics have been slightly improved from previous Worms games as you can now play at a higher resolution, and thankfully they've gone back to 2D in this Worms iteration. Besides that though, there's not much really to report in the graphics department!

Plot (3/5)
As far as I know, there is no plot to this game. So it's easy to score!

Gameplay(4/5)
The game has pretty much the same good ol' Worms gameplay of the 2D era. There's nothing revolutionary but man it's fun!

For those of you who don't know what Worms is about, as mentioned before, it's basically an artillery game. You have a team of four Worms which is pitted against one or more enemy teams. Each team takes turns in eliminating the other team and you can do so with a variety of weapons at your disposal, such as shotguns, bazookas and grenades. You can also get some hilariously ridiculous weapons such as exploding sheep, a falling concrete Donkey and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch (the game couldn't call itself British without an obligatory Monty Python reference!)

That's what you usually do in multiplayer, which you can play over Steam either with strangers or friends. In single player, you can play a campaign which will pit you against the AI more often than not, although you do get to do some levels with puzzles which are a welcome change.

The only criticism I can think with regards to the gameplay is that some weapons/tools don't quite operate like they used to and there are no longer replays (which I miss).

Replayability (4/5)
Just like the original Worms, you can play on multiple randomised maps and you can play it multiplayer, making it a thoroughly replayable game.

Unlike the original games, you now get Steam achievements and you can also unlock hats, maps, items, etc. by completing the single player campaign. This makes the game even more replayable than before!

Worms Reloaded Gameplay

Polish(1/5)
Unfortunately, the game is very poorly polished - which is really inexcusable considering how long this game has been out and how little the gameplay has changed! There are interface glitches, invisible pixels, a broken matchmaking system and the middle-mouse button causes you to jump (which is really frustrating if you use the same button for push-to-talk in TeamSpeak).

And those are only the bugs/glitches I found... there are probably heaps more yet to be discovered...

Overall - 6/10
You could almost mistake Worms Reloaded for one its 20th century ancestors, if it weren't for the myriad of bugs...

If you want to get the game, you can get it off Steam.

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