Annelid Armageddon

The Worms series of games have allowed gamers to wage explosive warfare against each other via small worms. This lends the games to a more comic feel and look. Worms 3D takes that experience into the third dimension very nicely, but with a few minor growing pains.

The basic concept of the game is to blow your opponents to bits before they succeed in doing so to you. This is accomplished by maneuvering your team of four worms or more around the battlefield (an island of some sort surrounded by water) and then firing any of a large arsenal of weaponry at the enemy team of worms. This concept leads to very fun gameplay, both mindless and strategic.

The game plays out rather simply. The first worm on your team gets his turn to wreak havoc on the enemy, followed by the first worm on the enemy's team doing the same in kind. If there are more than two teams, the third and possible fourth teams would then get turns as well. This pattern continues until the match is over. Worms are killed either by losing all of their health, or by being knocked out of the arena and into the water.

Moving and firing with your worm is not difficult, though getting the knack of some of the aiming may take a few minutes to get the hang of. The camera angle is easily manipulated with the yellow C-Stick, and movement is controlled through the joystick. Jumping with the B button can be a little tricky at times, with the worm just as likely to hit a low wall and bounce back as he is to clear it. While confusing at first, all of this becomes second nature quickly. As with the preceding Worms games, the fire button (A for the GameCube) is held down to fill the power gauge that determines the how far a projectile is launched.
To make aiming harder, wind can throw off many kinds of weapons. It becomes strategic to reserve some wind ignoring weapons for when that strong cross breeze makes a particular target otherwise unaccessible. Aiming and firing are different for the various weapons, some using a blimp view, while others better suited for a first person view. In any case, it is all picked up with ease.

The basic settings for battle give you an infinite supply of a couple basic weapons, while carefully limiting your supply of other, more devastating equipment. Additionally, there are also timers that prevent some of the more potent weapons from being used until a certain number of turns have passed. Some of the weapons are typical fare, Bazookas, Grenades, Shotguns etc. but a larger portion are comic in nature. Exploding Sheep, Mad Cows, a voodoo induced Earthquake and even a Holy Hand Grenade make weapon selections extremely enjoyable. Most weapons will not only take a chunk out of an enemy worm's health, but also out of the arena. In addition to the weapons you begin with, crates containing extra arsenal are dropped randomly about the arena.

There are a lot of customizations possible. In addition to premade battle zones, new ones (though not quite as pretty) can be randomly generated. Also, the time delays and ammo quantities of weapons are tweakable, allowing for some ridiculous but fun game variants.

Overall, the gameplay is fun and easy to pick up, but does suffer from some of the growing pains associated with adapting a 2D game to a 3D world. It is far more effective and easy to simply knock a worm into the water than it is to bother about destroying all of its health. While it has always been more efficient to knock worms into the water, it has rarely been easier. Also, worms can often get stuck on bits of land in odd ways that don't make much sense.

Graphically, the game is cartoony but smooth. The explosions are nothing exceptional but fit very well. It is important to note that this game is not eye candy, and the graphics are centered more around the gameplay than anything else. The change in style between Worms 2 and Worms 3D feels unfortunate. Worms 2 had a very unique style, while Worms 3D doesn't differentiate itself greatly from any other game.

In terms of sound, the game follows the patterns of its forebears. Your worms will voice themselves often and with unique phrases concerning their deaths, pains, successes and screw-ups. There are a myriad of different personalities and languages available, from Hippy to Pirate, Viking to Confucian. Eventually, a lot of these can get rather repetitive, but not terribly so. Music in the game is well done, but hardly noticeable or memorable.

A good portion of the game does need to be unlocked, but this isn't terribly difficult. In fact, the challenge levels and "story" mode which unlock features and premade arenas are never impossibly difficult, and are definitively fun. A skilled gamer should be able to unlock everything in about twenty hours, with even a clutz clocking in around forty in the utter worst case scenario.

With just these aspects in mind, the game is excellent and well worth playing and practically without flaw. Aside from a few minor glitches, the game is flawless though not perfect.

However, the pregame interface leaves much to be desired. It is overly complicated and difficult to maneuver, unlike the ingame. One thing that holds true for one menu is reversed in another, or even within the very same menu. If you forget to exit out of one menu to go all the way back to the menu where you can save your game file, changes to teams of worms, game types and more can be lost.

In the end, this is a game best played with friends. The computer AI is decent, but no game's AI makes up for the comments, laughter and fun to be had with real people. Without friends, this game's replayability drops greatly, though it is still good for the occasional play to relieve some stress. It can work as a weekend rental, but is well worth buying.