There are very few things that trigger my sense of nostalgia quite as powerfully as Worms: Armageddon. When this was released on the Nintendo 64 back in 1999, it instantly became one of THE rotation of multiplayer hits that dominated Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at home with family and friends (along with Mario Party, Mario Kart 64, Bomberman 64 and Super Smash Bros). A good friend was a neighbour and I had two brothers, meaning that we almost always had the full four player group that we needed to make those multiplayer sessions epic week-in, week-out. Worms in particular was such gleefully stupid fun, and yet at the same time, it was a genuinely well-made, taut, smart turn-based strategy game. It gave us laughs, but also had the longevity to return to month after month after month. It was the near-perfect multiplayer experience in other words. And now, thanks to the exceptional talents of Digital Eclipse, the perfect port of that game has been delivered to the Nintendo Switch.
If you’ve never played a Worms game before, it’s likely because you were born sometime after the 90s and so have only ever seen Team 17’s increasingly floundering efforts to keep Worms relevant in the modern era. Originally, though, before ill-fated efforts at 3D and Battle Royale Worms, the series was brilliant in its simplicity. You took control of a small team of worms, and then battled with 1-3 other teams over fully destructible 2D arenas, using weapons that ranged from a relatively humble bazooka, right through to exploding cows and sheep, and of course, a Holy Hand Grenade, which would sing “Hallelujah” before decimating anything nearby.
What made Worms so brilliant is that there was skill involved in using most of those weapons. On your turn, you had a minute or so to move one of your worms around, line up a shot, take into account things like terrain and wind, and then fire it with just the right amount of power that it hits its target (typically one of the other team’s worms).
It’s frequently funny because no matter how good you actually get at the game there will be times where a slight error in judgement will result in you blowing up your own side instead. There are few things quite as inherently amusing as unleashing a Holy Hand Grenade only for one of your worms to be just a little too close to the blast and subsequently get hurled into the ocean (an instant death). It works on the flip side, too, when you line up a seemingly impossible shot only to have the wind carry it perfectly and win you the game. The idea of making mistakes or winning by a combination of skill and a heavy dose of luck are nothing new in multiplayer, but the presentation in Worms makes it downright funny, no matter how many times it happens.
That’s all there is to Worms, basically. You can play a single-player mode, but it’s really just a bunch of scenarios against AI opponents, and was never more than practice when you couldn’t get a multiplayer group going. Thankfully you can play online with the Anniversary edition making the multiplayer persistently available. With that said the lobby system is a little clumsy (you’ll be setting up games and rules using sliders using a terribly cheap interface and lobby system) and critically there is no way to set up private matches as far as I could tell. When I was setting up games to play with my brother for this review, we were constantly having to kick random players that we didn’t want in our game and that was a critical oversight. I also had a couple of drop outs while playing, but other than that the online experience is typically smooth, with minimal lag. That’s just as well since here “lag” would have undermined the experience terribly.
One other disappointing and unacceptable corner cut with mulitplayer is the lack of cross-platform play. We live in an era where cross-platform multiplayer is enabled for vastly more complex games than Worms, but because multiplayer is platform-limited here I haven’t been able to get a four-player game going with my ususal group. What this means is that, unlike back in 1999, this take on Worms Armageddon won’t be part of the weekend multiplayer rotation, as only some of us are able to play.
The overall package might not sound like much, but this is how video games were back in the day, and Digital Eclipse has done a magnificent job in bringing the game to modern consoles. The art is vibrant and colourful (and in high resolution, which looks particularly good on the OLED Switch screen).
While the developers haven’t tried to add new modes or mess with the gameplay, what they have done is what Digital Eclipse has become famous for – turning the “retro re-release” into a kind of museum experience. There’s a timeline in the game with a year-by-year breakdown of the history of Worms, including little video clips, animation and art pieces to further illustrate. It’s a really neat feature and, much like with the Atari 50, I wish more developers followed this specific way to their own retro re-packages. People that buy them are typically deep fans of the series and learning a little more about it is an excellent value-add to the overall experience.
Digital Eclipse didn’t stop there. There’s also an emulated copy of the Game Boy Color version of Worms Armageddon. Unfortunately, they didn’t emulate the multiplayer component to allow you to play online (though it is possible to play local multiplayer by physically passing the console around), but the game does hold up as a drastic minimisation of Worms Armageddon down to its core qualities. You’ll not going to spend hours playing this, but as a novelty it’s a great extra feature.
The long and short of it is that Worms Armageddon is a classic, both within the Worms series and multiplayer gaming in general. While today it might seem a little barebones in terms of content, and the online multiplayer features are far too limited for a game that relies entirely on the multiplayer experience, as far as the playability goes it’s still off the charts, and one of the best games you can treat yourself to.
