Well This is apparently this the last installment of the Worms series. It is a series that has been around for many years. Although it is a series I never played, and never really showed any interest in anyway. So when I say pictures and previews in magazines in the months leading up to its release, I was less than excited. It was on the N64, which is designed for 3D games, but it uses 2D graphics that a game boy could almost produce. Why is this? I’ll explain later. But when I first saw these pictures, I was wondering why the hell it was like this. I was just wondering why they didn’t bother making the transition into 3D just like so many of the classic 2D games had recently done. But then again it was made by a 3rd party developer, called team 17, which I had never heard of before, so I assumed they were amateurs who were just doing a simple remake of an old game for a few extra bucks. I just assumed it would be a piece of shit that would soon be ignored. The game didn’t seem to be the most appealing game, but ended up to be rather popular. I was just so wrong with first impressions.
Worms is a turn-based game. Not like gay ones where you have a menu of about 4 moves and pick one and see what happens. There is more involved. You have a team of 4 worms, and a big choice of weapons, some of which are VERY destructive. What you do is when it’s your turn; one of your worms is activated. You move it around the stage and try to kill your foes. Each worm bass 100 hit points of health and its dead once these points are gone, or if it drowns. It may not sound brilliant, but it’s very hard to explain. Some of these weapons require precise actions, such as grenades, which are based on the angle and power you use to throw them. But with some of the more destructive weapons (which come in rather limited numbers) you just have to aim in the general direction, and get out the way before you kill yourself.
The best thing about this game is it’s just so fun. It’s extremely humorous. When you crate your team of worms, you get to name your team and each worm, so the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. This is a laugh if you do it in the right way. You also choose your teams main weapon, tombstones, flag, and the language they speak. Your choices of languages are: English, French, German, Jock, Sool and Sergeant. The last 3, you might have noticed aren’t actual languages, but rather are English, with funny accents. So if you make the right choices you can make a pretty funny team such as my brothers team, which are called the fags, speak in French, and their names are: jiz, lippy, scrotum and Anus.
Other funny parts of the game are the weapons, such as: baseball bats (you can hit homeruns with worms into the water), Holy Hand-Grenade (a rather destructive weapon inspired by Monty Python), Mad Cows, and Indian Nuclear Test. I also love the way the game makes a mockery of so many other games, such as Streetfighter and Mortal Kombat.
This game is all about multiplayer gameplay. The 1-player missions are extremely fun but it’s the multiplayer that counts. You can just sit playing one bout with friends for minutes or hours. And it’s great fun to team up on your friends. This multiplayer rivals Perfect Dark and Goldeneye, and to be truthful, I’d probably rather play Worms. You can just pick up worms and play it at anytime, without needing full concentration. As it is so easy to play.
So to sum up, this game has 2D cartoon graphics, which may not be appealing for those who demand flashy graphics, but they suit the game, infact if they had used 3D graphics for this game, I just don’t think it would have worked. There is something else that’s great about using simplistic graphics, and that’s the fact that the levels must have been very easy to make. And there are heaps of them, at first I just couldn’t believe how many landscapes there were. Even if you manage to get sick of all the landscapes (which seems impossible), you can choose a shape and it will generate a landscape. The simplistic graphics are also brilliant in the way that there never is any form of graphical glitch, frame rate problem, of anything like that. As for sound, its brilliant, many voice samples and the choice of your worms speaking different languages is brilliant, as its so funny. And the gameplay is the best thing about the game, especially multiplayer, but one player with modes such as training, missions and deathmatch, should all keep you entertained for months.
Overall this is the most fun I’ve had playing a game recently. It’s not a serious game, so don’t take it seriously, and you’ll hopefully have as much fun as I have had. In a time where people judge games merely on graphics, or how mature it is, its brilliant to too a simplistic game that doesn’t take itself the slightest bit seriously, and it revolves around the idea of just having fun. I think its just what I had been looking for in as game, which is why I give it the perfect score. I hope many people take notice of this game and don’t ignore it like I did when I had my initial assumptions about it, as it an extremely high quality game, and it is great value for your money. I must ask everyone to at least play this game, if not buy it. I consider it to be an essential purchse.
Score: 10/10
Developer: Team 17
Rumble: yes
Memory: in cart
Expansion: don’t think so
