When I was in high school in the backwoods of Ohio I used to play a game called tanks. Tanks consisted of using different weapons and calculating power and angles to hit your targets. I never once got a chance to play Worms though, which pays homage to Tanks, and I was grateful to obtain the collection.
Worms acts much in the same way as the old Tanks title, but adds in fun graphics, humor and plenty of atomic-level mayhem. You have five worms and your adversary has five worms. The goal is simple, kill your opponent. I wanted a challenge from another human, and really wanted to play someone on the same screen as me, so I went to my close friend Jake’s house and we sat down and decided to go head to head.
Thus began what will be known as The Lost Afternoon.
Jake and I started with the first Worms game and went through the very good tutorial to learn the basics. After we felt comfortable with the controls, Jake challenged me to a battle. We both created teams and were ready to go to war. We looked at all of the weapons and I smiled when I got the first strike. I chose a grenade and threw it…only to end up blowing myself up as the thing hit a peak and rolled back down onto me. Darn that physics engine.
While Jake and I understood the controls, mastering the game still took some getting used to. In fact, during that first battle we did more damage to ourselves than each other. The winner could have been the guy who held his fire.
Eventually we both got the hang of it though, which led to some pretty interesting moments. In one battle I used a jack hammer and dug deep into the level, only to have Jake drop dynamite on my head.
One thing I found interesting was the Worms Armageddon game, part of the collection, which was fully 3D. This became a whole new challenge with actually aiming weapons, and was quite fun. All of the weapons are unique and some are goofy. Personally, I was a big fan of the blowtorch.
The graphics were what you would expect, normal arcade type with a cartoon overtone. Everything was well drawn and the details were relatively clear. Maximum Games even did a good job adding fine details like when they made a street fighter pun with one of the moves.
It’s also helpful that the worms themselves are really funny. Even when you get killed, sometimes in spectacular ways, its almost always accompanied by a joke or funny cry form either the shooter or the victim, which makes the sting of death a little easier to take, especially when you die of an accidentally self-inflicted injury. We found ourselves laughing at the screen quite bit the whole day.
The controls in this game were strange at first, but once you got used to them you stopped blowing yourself up…somewhat. With the walkthrough covering the basic controls as well as each weapon, you are well informed. In Worms knowledge is power, but not as powerful as a homing missile.
http://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=LZdZ9j-aggo
I loved the background music in this game too. It’s very fitting and achieves that perfect balance of serious, but corny. Also, the sound effects were just magnificent. Every sound effect had a slight goofy quality to it, and that really helped the humorous battle experience flourish.
The Worms Collection is a great title to pick up, especially if you are itching to play a fun game with friends or even at a party with people in the same room. And those games for the 360 and PS3 are sadly somewhat rare. If you want something fun to lighten the mood, let the worms craw into your console.
The Worms Collection earns 4 out of 5 Gin Gems which they can use to buy more ridiculously overpowered weapons.