Worms – a franchise that lost its way

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Casual or professional I doubt there’s a gamer out there that doesn’t have some sort of contact with one or more of the games in the Worms franchise.

This sort of exposure leads to countless opinions and an overall proper rating system, something reviewers may occasionally miss.

A long long time ago, when Worms first entered the world of games they elbowed their way to success we thought that it was just the beginning of something beautiful.

Going through time, past the enormously successful Worms: Armageddon and Worms World Party we found ourselves relishing in making the little crawlers kill each other while destroying the world around them.

Since then, things haven’t been focused somewhere within Team 17. The developers made sure Worms 3D and Worms 4: Mayhem brought new weapons along, new technology and the very popular third dimension of the graphics.

Sadly though, fans almost wound up hating the new interface, the “unnecessarily” complicated camera control and the somewhat illogical AI.

The biggest complaint the Worms franchise faced at this time was the lack of “zing”, essence, that special something that made the game as good as it used to be.

Destruction, amusing voices, ridiculous tombstones and absurd weaponry was still there and yet it lead to the downfall of Worms as we knew them.

Last year, the release of Worms: Reloaded gave us a right feel for the game. Much like the Simpsons TV Series, Worms “live” at their best when “limited” by the 2D space.

I liked Worms: Reloaded, I’m sure many others feel the same but it was mostly for the nostalgic moment and fun. Some of the game content was lost, game “completion” time seems to have been shorted out slightly.

Further helping what I think of as being the decline of the Worms franchise is that just this month, Team 17 and the game’s publishers started releasing some DLC content to fill in the gaps.

It all sounds tempting but it is very annoying. By releasing the DLC content it’s almost as if Team 17 acknowledges that the latest installment in the Worms franchise was incomplete.

That isn’t the wrong part, what I find problematic is how the DLC packs sum up to more than what the original game costs. That just seems like Team 17 is charging us extra in order to get a version of Worms: Reloaded that we should have gotten at launch last year.

Even though the Time Attack, Retro, Forts and soon to come Puzzle DLC Pack make for a slightly more fulfilling game experience I can’t find the point.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of DLC packs out there for which I did or will soon hand over the credit card details for. The Worms: Reloaded DLC ones aren’t on my list.

What I can hope for now is that the future future Worms (maybe Revolutions?) will see Team 17 correcting the mistakes and give us a new, worthwhile game and stop with sequels the likes of Police Academy 7 – director’s cut.