This was reviewed with a review copy of “Worms Clan Wars”
Worms are some of the most fascinating animals on earth. They are capable of making nutrient-rich soil, help us catch fish, and are capable of living in all kinds of habitats from marine to land. I wonder from this if the producers at Team17 looked at worms and thought these creatures could be used for more then gardening.
In Team17’s newest release, Worms Clan Wars, worms now crawl around different maps for terrestrial domination. The basic goal is to be the last worm, or worms, standing while the enemy worms are dead in the dust. You can use tons and tons of weapons from dynamite, to shotguns, bazookas, to a worm’s self-sacrifice to achieve this goal.
At Team17 the worms have been trained to help out Tara Pinkleton, a crypt keeper whose goal in life is to collect artifacts from various places all over the world. She uses worms as her army in order to get at them. Not a bad plan since many artifacts are buried underground, a geographical location on earth that worms know completely.
In the story line, Tara Pinkleton has two factions of worms: The green team are the ones actually looking for archaeological stuff underground. The red team is the one players get to manipulate, and they fight against the mercenary worms that Mesmer hired. Mesmer is another crypt keeper hell bent on getting the ‘Stone Carrot’ before Tara does. He wants it in order to take over the entire Worms world for his own bidding. Given that throughout the campaign Tara’s character is questionable in terms of motives and morals, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wants the same thing, but my worms and I have been paid; I can leave morality behind while working for her.
Truth be told, Tara’s character is awesome! She is obsessive about hunting artifacts to the point of stealing them left, right and centre. She’ll put a bullet in anyone, or rather hire worms to put a bullet in anyone, that dares to get in her way. Given her genocidal tendencies, the enemy worms quickly regretted siding against her! She has the attitude of someone so sure of herself that if pride and arrogance were Olympic sports, she’d win the gold medal. She is also a less than competent boss. For example, she “accidentally” gave away the entire attack plan to enemy worms in the story line. What’s worse is that her elitist attitude is just laughed off as an honest mistake and life moves on. Incidentally, Tara was voiced by Katherine Parkinson, who played Jen from The IT Crowd.
Katherine did a fabulous job with the voice acting. She captured Tara’s personality perfectly. The way Tara talked, as if the whole archaeological world revolved around her, when she flippantly said stuff like “Oh, if you get caught I am just gonna have to kill you as one of the enemy”.
To put it mildly, I loved hating her even though she was the one writing the pay cheques for my worms. She might tell you at the end “Oops, I spent all your money on my latest archaeological find… Sorry! I wouldn’t sue me if I was you as I didn’t get the money I was going to pay you with the legal way.” As you can tell, I enjoyed the story and how it moved along.
In terms of gameplay, the game plays through 2D maps with 3D elements in them. Usually your ultimate goal is to kill all the enemy worms on the map, however, some maps have different objectives, like getting to one of your allies in order to recruit them to your party. Throughout the maps you collect numerous weapons, ranging form rocket launchers and bazookas, to dynamite or shotguns. You can also capture more friendly items like parachutes and jet packs to navigate more difficult jumps, as well as a gun that lets you teleport objects out of the way.
The graphics were adequate. Can’t say I’ve never seen them before, nor that they blew my mind. I’m glad though, that the developers kept things simple and didn’t go overboard with graphical perfection. I’ve played games where the graphics were awesome to the expense of everything else. Better to have graphics done well, and go with a game that got everything else right, than have all this new stuff full of bugs to the point where the gamer becomes the product tester.
The best part about the gameplay for me was definitely getting weapons and blowing enemy worms to the end of the world. I loved that in the 2D environment, the land and the sea responds to you. For example, if I set dynamite next to an enemy to blow him up and the rocks around it, you end up with one giant hole. That hole gets bigger as worms blow themselves up when their health gets low enough. Just beware items like dynamite can kill off your worm too, so don’t get carried away.
I must state though, there are some maps that get frustrating. I know it took me a bit of time, a few of which were in the earlier levels, to understand how to manipulate the items to get around the map. This was true of weapons and friendly items. Get ready to not get the jump using the parachute the first time around. I also couldn’t help but notice that I had a lot of worms just sitting around doing nothing in particular because they outlived their usefulness. They cleared one dude, and then drained a water way the rest of the time, and the waterway served no purpose beyond it needed draining! This could be nit picky, but I like utilising all my resources if possible.
Quite a few times in other games, like the MMOs and RPGs, I clean out my inventory of things that are just collecting dust. Too bad it would be detrimental to take out my ally worms that are just sitting there. So, if you do not like games where you have resources for the sake of having resources, this isn’t a game for you. Furthermore, If trying to figure out how to manipulate items starts making you frustrated, turn off the game and walk away.
Worms Clan Wars is turn-based, but not like the Civilization games. Each worm has their own turn and it goes back and forth between your worm, then an enemy’s worm, then it goes to another worm in your party. You don’t just have a long turn where all your worms do their thing and then the enemy’s does their thing. Your worm’s turn ends the moment you use an item or a weapon. For some maps your turn only have ~30s limit, so use them wisely! Unfortunately, it was sometimes too easy to use up a turn. For example, if my worm loses one hit point for sliding down a rock, its turn is automatically over. This can get frustrating if learning new game controls is a challenge for you and/or you are unfamiliar with this type of genre. If you want to play a game where your turns are a bit more flexible, Worms Clan Wars isn’t for you.
There could be ways to make the controls easier. You can modify them as much as you like under the game’s settings. Unfortunately, the game didn’t notice that my keyboard has a game-pad so I couldn’t utilize it much beyond its default settings. Hopefully Team17 will allow me to make my game-pad a bit more useful in the future.
I must state, don’t let the 2D-ness of the maps fool you. This game is very much a turn-based strategy game crossed with a platform game. If you aren’t thinking about which weapon to use, you’re trying to jump to the next rock/platform. To me, the best games mix brains and brawn towards achieving a goal.
Don’t be surprised if you are doing a lot of trial and error in this game. Not fully understanding the terrain could result in one or two of your worms taking a tumble and having to re-start the map as a result. For me, this wasn’t frustrating because I enjoy thinking and then re-thinking strategies. Thankfully, many maps had check points I could restart from. Others, however, don’t provide that luxury and have to be started from the beginning. If you prefer a straight forward platform game like the old school Mario Bros. or a game that is all strategy like Civilization, Worms Clan Wars isn’t for you.
This brings me to the last piece of this game: Multiplayer. Team17 did well with the overall game and its single player features. According to previews on the game, however, this was supposed to be their biggest multiplayer game yet. In the previews for it, the developers were:
… very excited about the game that is designed for multiplayer interaction and community development. – See more at: Worms Clan Wars Available for Pre-Order.
Did it deliver on its multiplayer/MMO features? Well, the multiplayer was included and it was fun to get into, but Worm Clan Wars isn’t a MMO in the sense that group content is overtly pushed and pushed. It is much more for people who have a group of friends that want to play the game as a team against another team. So unless you have that, there’s a good chance multiplayer won’t be much use for you. However, it is a nice addition to have.
Summary
Worm Clan Wars was designed by Team17 to be a more multiplayer continuation of the Worm Wars franchise with single player elements. Thankfully, they did not leave single players alone in the dust. The game and story was fun to play through, and I found that the maps were very well done and exceeded many of my expectations.
I will say this again: Katherine Parkinson did an awesome job playing as Tara Pinkleton. This woman chases after artifacts, threatens genocide on any worms that side with her enemy, wants to permanently silence those who run off with her artifacts. Oh yeah, Tara is far from a good gal. It’s too bad the game doesn’t have a campaign where you actually play against her worm forces. It’d be interesting to keep her, someone whose pride goes to the extreme, from getting her ultimate prize: The Stone Carrot.
The game is bug free as far as I could tell, and it was very fun navigating through the different maps. Unfortunately, some aspects of the game were frustrating but thankfully not game breaking. As I said earlier in the review, don’t be surprised if you have quite a few worms that can’t do anything in particular. Use their turns wisely, lest the computer out-wits you. Don’t be surprised if you wind up yelling at your worms, mentally and verbally, as you reset the map. Just take a deep breath, pull out the bazooka for all your worms and vent your frustrations out on the enemy.
It would have been fun to do more multiplayer stuff, as I enjoy the dynamics player vs player adds to any game. However, multiplayer in this game is a bit dependant on you having a group of people that want to play the game alongside you. Without it, the chances of you playing multiplayer is slim to none, and for many slim left town. Hopefully, as the game launches and more people start playing it, multiplayer will greatly improve.
Well, that’s done. Now if you don’t mind, I have to go blow up some worms in order to steal retrieve artifacts for Ms. Pinkleton.