Worms Clan Wars

There’s nothing quite like that arching bazooka shot across the map. That giddy feeling present in the original Worms still remains in the latest outing from Team17, Worms Clan Wars.

The campaign introduces you very gently to the concepts of the game, which will be great for newcomers

The fundamental gameplay of worms, if you’re not familiar with any other the previous iterations, is that you have a team of worms and you must use all sorts of weaponry to kill the other team of worms. The arenas are 2.5D and are fully destructible, with gameplay being turn-based. Teams can be made up of different classes of worms (a relatively new addition to the series) each with their own ability.

The soldier class is the all-rounder, and he has the ability to detonate grenades at will. The scout can move faster and jump further, and also has the ability to see into crates and avoid detonating mines. The heavy, while slow and with a purely humorous jump, does more damage and has a huge explosion on death. The scientist heals all worms on your team slightly on every turn. The number of weapons in the game is massive, with all the oldies returning, including my personal favourite the banana bomb. For experienced gamers, the gameplay is familiar as expected, no ground-breaking changes to the way the games are played out, but this is an evolution of the previous games.

One area Team 17 have worked to improve a great deal on is the single player experience, including an entire single player campaign, which in turn provides the setting for all of the arenas. The entire game is set inside a museum, with different sections available thought the campaign and provides various themes such as a pleasant Nordic theme or an Inca styled theme. The campaign introduces you very gently to the concepts of the game, which will be great for newcomers to the series. Typically Worms has a steep learning curve, so including a campaign that helps newcomers along the way as a kind of tutorial is a great way to get into the game, but experienced wormers may find this a little tedious to start with. Throughout the campaign, you’re advised (sometimes poorly) how to proceed by Tara Pinkleton, voiced by Katherine Parkinson. She guides you on the quest to find the concrete carrot in humorous fashion. The campaign consists of 25 missions, which span over five different exhibits. The voice acting here is fantastic and really gives a bit of character to the campaign.

The levels themselves generally feel a lot more like a platform game than a traditional worms Deathmatch. There is a heavy emphasis on physics based objects, you rely on lifts to get access to higher level, and there are doors to open when you reach a certain area, or kill a certain enemy. Adding these kinds of objects also means that players can break them, however. On a couple of occasions I got a lift stuck or a door got stuck on a bit of scenery. There are a number of checkpoints so while not a huge inconvenience it can be slightly frustrating. Outside of the campaign there is also another single player mode titled “Worm Ops”. These are challenges set out for you to complete in as fast a time as possible, with the results placed on leader boards online for all to see. There is also the traditional local versus mode, for a quick skirmish against the A.I. or an old school hot-seat game.

 There is a huge push for player created content, everything can be customised…

As the title suggests, the main emphasis is on the clan wars game mode. This enables you to create your own clan, or join a friend’s and battle online. You create a clan, clan symbol, and then start competing. You play a handful of games and are placed in a relevant league according to your skill level. You then work towards promotion, with your friends helping out. All these games are tracked and all stats are recorded, which are viewable on the web portal or companion app. Helping decide who is the best, or weakest in your clan. While not in full swing just yet, time will tell how active the community is on clan wars.

Being a PC exclusive, Worms Clan Wars takes advantage of a lot of features of the platform. So using Steam Workshop, players can import their own items into the game, creating new trinkets and outfits. There is a huge push for player created content, everything can be customised, from your worms appearance to having the ability to upload your own created levels full of physics objects. Moving forward with the potential for player created campaigns, this is one area which while relying heavily on the community, could potentially lead to a lot of extra content for the game.


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