Darkstation | Worms Revolution

Game Info
Publisher: Team17 Software Limited
Developer: WB Games
Release Date: 10/10/2012
Genre: Strategy
ESRB: E 10+

Only in a Worms game can you launch an exploding sheep at an enemy or teleport across the screen and call in an airstrike to take out several opponents at once! Worms Revolution is the latest installment to the franchise release on Xbox Live Arcade. While it comes with some new bells and whistles, this is the Worms gameplay that has made this series famous and so recognizable. While I have never been a Worms fanatic, I have always enjoyed the games and I can say that without a doubt Worms Revolution is the total package and one of the best Worms games I have played!

Worms Revolution is a package that is crammed with tons of goodies. There are enough modes and gameplay features to keep you occupied for as long as you would want to play Worms. There is a fairly lengthy campaign, an online competitive mode, puzzle challenges, and a verses option. They really couldn’t have packed in more content if they tried. The campaign is a highlight of the game as it is narrated by a British narrator in the form of a wildlife television show akin to Steve Irwin but only if he told all of the animals on the show to kill each other with nukes and baseball bats. So in a way it’s better. While the game is very much the same gameplay of past Worms games they have introduced new features which the most notable being the new physics aspect involving flowing fire and rushing water.

The campaign is made up of multiple worlds that each have eight levels and different themes that range from sewers to beaches. All of the missions are accompanied by the narrator talking as if you are playing through a BBC style wildlife show and really hits a lot of funny marks. There is no story really to the campaign you are just thrown into themed worlds with a funny narration and worms to kill with crazy weapons. As you play through the missions you collect and unlock new weapons to make your worm killing that much more effective. The versus mode is just the simple worm versus worm deathmatch but does come with a few variations to the matches that you can select to mix up the experience. Versus mode is also a local co-op mode allowing you to have multiple people playing on one screen or you can just set up matches against the AI. The puzzle mode really just kind feels like advanced training as it teaches you new ways to use your tools in order to defeat enemies in hard to reach scenarios.

The physics is the big new feature to Worms Revolution and it really adds some new layers to the gameplay. There are objects around the map such as bottles or giant lighters that when you blow them up may throw waves of water into the map to possibly drown the enemy worms or plums of fire to rain down on an area cooking anything it touches. While the feature is a neat addition it does feel like it can be relied on a little too heavily and interfere with the simple gameplay which is what makes Worms so much fun. The physics work best with the new weapons such as the water cannon and water balloon and less so with the environmental aspects. It’s more satisfying to use the water cannon to blast a worm down a hill into the abyss rather than blow up an obviously convenient placed object in the world.

Worms Revolution has a great cartoon art style that is full of bright and vibrant colors. The game has a very simple 2D appearance and the developers really worked magic with what there is to look at. The explosions look amazing but the water looks blockier and more like jelly than actual rushing water. This game is really just some amazing eye candy and with such great looking explosions it just makes blowing up worms that much better to look at. The environments from the game are all really well designed and the worms look funny and exaggerated as they move through the levels. With tons of costume options for the characters there can also be a wide variety of appearance between all of the characters on screen which makes it never hard to tell what you are looking at. For a downloadable game, no expense was spared in the graphics department here.

Comedy is such a hard thing to get right in video games but Worms has it in spades. The narrator is consistently hilarious and made the campaign well worth playing even if it starts off slow with a lot of tutorials. While the game is turn based tactics, it may come with a slow pace but is still a whole lot of fun to play. Taking out another team without losing a single one of your worms is so satisfying and the weapons are just the right balance of awesome and ridiculous that you would want. Where else can you send a sheep running across a map only to detonate them like a bomb? Point to Worms. This game also seems to have the biggest collection of weapons and abilities and each one you unlock is even more fun or crazier than the last. There are a lot of campaign missions and enough versus options to last a long time but if that isn’t enough there is always the multiplayer mode which allows you to face someone else online.

This game also has a large amount of customization. You have the option to do map customization and there are tons of options for your worms. There are different classes of worms that have all different skills such as being able to move quicker or jump higher. You can also unlock many different costume options as well different victory dances and tombstones for when they meet their untimely demise and blow themselves to kingdom come. You can even go in and individual name all of your worms. There really are a ton of options to play around with and you can really design the team of worms that you truly want to use to destroy the opposition.

Worms Revolution is a full and great package for the price. As a downloadable game this would be a good collection to any library to keep handy on a hard drive and keep revisiting. This game is hilarious and witty with its narrator and silly character ramblings. Playing through the campaign is well worth it and with a good multiplayer mode there is enough Worms to go around! You are never short of gameplay options and with it being so simple and fun there’s no reason anyone can’t have a fun time with this charming downloadable title. While I always swore by Worms Armageddon, Worms Revolution, while it may be an iteration, feels like a whole new game and the best game in the franchise.