Worms: The Revolution Collection Review

Introducing Worms to any seasoned gamer will most likely be unnecessary but for anyone unfamiliar, Worms is a 2D turn-based strategy series developed by Team17. The series has enjoyed great popularity, with countless instalments spanning over 15 years. Worms: The Revolution Collection bundles two recent Worms games, Worms: Revolution and Worms 2: Armageddon, along with all of their respective downloadable content, into one excellent package.

"Classic Worms" is probably the best way to describe Worms: Revolution. Despite adopting a 2.5D presentation, it eschews the series' previous indulgences with 3D and embraces the classic 2D gameplay we all know and love. There have been some additions, of course. Class-based gameplay makes its first appearance in the series. Players can choose between the standard Soldier, the quick and nimble Scout, the team-healing Scientist and the bulky and powerful Heavy, adding a new dimension of customisation and strategy to an already winning formula.

There's also a heavier focus on physics objects; players can utilise contextual water traps to flush away enemy Worms, for example, as well as manipulating moveable terrain in order to gain various advantages. Although these features don't alter the core gameplay experience greatly, they go some way to fighting off déjà vu and making the Worms experience feel at least somewhat new and original.

The campaign modes, however, are a slightly more hit-and-miss affair. Far too much time is spent introducing the new mechanics and the difficulty is painfully low to begin with, with many enemy Worms skipping their turns in lieu of making any genuine attempts to reach the player. However, the difficulty does ramp up after a while and the campaign becomes highly enjoyable, offering a wide variety of settings and challenges. With an already lengthy core campaign, as well as 3 DLC packs offering similar but highly enjoyable missions, Worms: Revolution contains hours and hours of gameplay, offering fantastic value for money.

Arguably the high point of the Campaign is the running narration. Despite offering a paper-thin pretence of a story, the excellent writing and hilarious narration by Matt Berry, star of The IT Crowd, offer the kind of consistent laughs rarely found in video games that aren't created by Valve. The quality of comedy on display is such that, even during the more tedious tutorial missions, the jokes make the general experience a pleasant one, overall.

In terms of presentation, Worms: Revolution is very nice. There's a solid mixture of environments on offer, from colourful and vibrant to dark and dirty, and the graphics are quite impressive for such a low-budget title. There are occasional frame-rate drops and other technical issues but they shouldn't affect gameplay in any noticeable way and for the most part, the game runs very smoothly. The selection of in-game music is very limited, however. Tracks will become irritating with their constant repetition; certainly a game to set your own music to.

The presence of Worms 2: Armageddon in this package is very welcome, indeed. There's very little to say about this game other than the fact that it's about as classic and traditional as Worms gets, and the inclusion of this title, as well as all of its DLC, makes for a very high value for money collection.

Despite a single-player campaign that varies in quality somewhat, the true fun of this collection, as is so often the case with Worms, is found in the multiplayer. Worms is, in my eyes, the ultimate party game, and passing the controller back and forth with a group of friends still holds all of the joyous appeal it always has, with an ubiquitous online mode giving the player further options for playing multiplayer.

Overall, I would highly recommend this game to any fans of the series. With two great core games, a wealth of DLC, fantastic writing and narration and an insanely fun multiplayer mode, the positives far outweigh the few negatives. Worms: Revolution might be the least accurate title I've ever seen, but when a game is as solid and enjoyable as this, who needs change?