Worms Battlegrounds - Maxi Geek Review

It has been sometime since I played a Worms game and even longer since I played a good one. Thankfully this latest iteration of the 19 year old franchise is perhaps one of the best.

You are reading this correctly, there is a story in Worms Battlegrounds. You, as a worm are tasked with helping Lady Pinkle stop the evil Lord Crowley Mesmer who has claimed the stone carrot, as his own and plans to use it to take over the world. His first step in this master plan is to enslave all the worms possible.
While the story in the missions is quite limited, there are a few nice little bits of dialogue that move it along. You mission is to find the Golden Child of blob who has psychic abilities and who will help defeat Mesmer. All this takes place inside a very nice museum, which Lady Pinkle has asked you not to destroy because she wants to steal some items later. So as you make your way through the displays you will find yourself battling against Viking worms, Aztec Worms and such.

Lady Pinkle, while stating many times that she is a thief, think Lara Croft without a moral compass. She also insists that the only way to defeat Mesmer is to slaughter all the worms under his control. The story does not take itself serious at all really and it works all the better for it.

Everyone should know what to expect here, the gameplay of Worms has not changed to much since the first game. While the core concepts are the same, it is now refined to a point where it feels like a comfortable shoe. But while it is the same core game you know, its also different.

There are now different classes of worms, each having a skill that makes it easier to move about. The Scout worm for example is smaller than the rest, and due to this size difference wont set off any landmines laying around. The Brute worm will have trouble jumping higher but are more resiliant to damage. The Psychic worm will provide health back to all the remaining team members when the turn starts.

Each of the levels are different in layout and hazard but stick to some similar themes, aztec, vikings and such. In fact learning what the hazards are in the world is probably your hardest challenge. In the viking levels, anchors will generally fall once they take even a small amount of damage. Should you find yourself on one of them you will pay for it.

Of course what makes the Worms games great is the weapons, and here there are some awesome new ones and great classics. Items such as the Holy Hand Grenade and the Concrete Donkey are back, along side staples such as the shotgun or fire punch. New items include the Winged Monkey that causes a monkey with wings to appear. The player can move it to the desired location, and then toggle between different Physics Objects to spawn and trap enemies.

Controlling your Worms is easy enough using either the analogue stick or the d-pad. All of the four classes of Worms can jump around and double jump to reach the higher levels, but the brute can not jump that high or far, which causes players to think about how to move him around each stage. In fact movement is a big deal here, if you use the scout to create a tunnel with the blow torch, a common thing to do since day one. You will find that the brute, being larger in size wont be able to fit through that gap. So while the days of lobbing a Banana Cluster Bomb are still here, you will need a little more forethought on how to get to where you want to throw it.

Taking the game online adds in a whole other level of thought you have to go through. As you are no longer facing off against the AI, real players wont line up the perfect shot each time which may make you question was it on purpose or not. Playing online there was no lag, nor anything that would make you think it was not with someone in another room. While the story mode offers you the chance to solo play, Online is where the real value is.

Worms Battlegrounds is a mixed bag in the looks department, while they have kept the look of the worms pretty much the same, they have upgraded the levels a fair amount. It has a contrast that does not sit well with me; Its not to say it looks bad it is just a bit jarring. Each of the worms make suitable noise for their size, with the brute making giant effort noises when he jumps. The speech that they have also reflects the class, as well as the theme. The Viking worms sound just a little different to the Aztec worms, which helps sell that these worms believe they are in. The music for the game is ok, there was no single track that made me think this game has great music.

The best part on the sound has to be Lady Pinkle, hearing her explain even the most irrelevant thing is funny. Each time she regales you of how she stole some important item from some hidden tribe in some forgotten country, the delivery of those lines may make you question if it actually happened.

Worms Battleground is perhaps the best Worms game to date. It takes what the Worms games are known for, refines it, adds a little polish and wraps it in a nice little bow. It is just a shame they did not try some really new things.

Thanks to Microsoft for supplying a copy of the game for review.