Worms: Reloaded Review

As its subtitle implies, Worms: Reloaded is a rehashing of the series, specifically the title Worms 2: Armageddon.  It’s only about a ten minute 2063MB download and has low system requirements consisting of a 1.25 GHz AMD Athlon or Intel equivalent processor, a 128MB Video Card, DirectX 9, and a DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card, making it compatible with mostly any modern PC.

The mainstay of this version is the enhanced multiplayer that I couldn’t actually play due to nobody being online since I’m actually playing the game before it’s released. However, from what I could gather, the multiplayer includes four player online and offline modes, twelve all-new achievements, leader boards, a bunch of new multiplayer-exclusive maps and a well-designed map editor that allows you to create custom maps to play online or with your friends offline.  As I wasn’t able to test the map customization online (due to nobody playing online), I’m unsure how this map creation actually translates into multiplayer.

There’s also an unprecedented level of customization available for your Worms team. These customization options include changing the color of a worm’s skin, a variety of victory dances, gravestones, and over 70 different voice options and themed hats.  Besides the customization, Worms: Reloaded also introduces a variety of 47 weapons and utilities. These include staples of the series such as the Bazooka, Dynamite, Shotgun, and Rope, classic items such as Armageddon, Napalm Strike and the Monty Python derived Holy Hand Grenade. There are also 14 new items that include the Super Bunker Buster, Poison Strike and Sentry Gun.

In addition to the new features, there is also an enhanced single player-mode with a 35 mission campaign. Unlike real players, the AI in the campaign never makes mistakes, and as a result is very difficult to beat. There appears to be seven different levels of AI, but the beta did not allow me to change the default AI. Besides for death matches, the 35 missions also include races, puzzles, and forts game that forces the player to either defend or attack a structure. There is also a Warzone Campaign that is even more difficult and is meant only for very experience players that left me stranded in the first level after numerous retries and Body Count mode that allows a player to face off against an incoming horde of opponent Worms. This seems like it works well as a co-operative multiplayer match type, but having no access to the multiplayer component of the game limited my experience. The graphics are also enhanced to high definition and the physics engine is revised to be a bit more stable.

While Worms: Reloaded has more extensive features than its predecessors, it’s essentially the same game. Then again, Worms: Reloaded was advertised as such, and is really only meant for either the die-hard Worms fans, people that don’t already own Worms 2: Armageddon on Xbox Live Arcade, or people that are exclusively computer gamers. There’s plenty of new content and it’s a good PC remake, but it’s not worth $20.00 if you already own a previous online compatible version of Worms unless you’re really interested in utilizing the custom map editor. Personally, I wouldn’t have bought it if I wasn’t testing it, but if you’re interested anyway, the game is available for on Steam.