Worms Clan Wars / Worms Battlegrounds

Worms Clan Wars could perhaps be compared to Worms World Party – a small update from the previous game featuring a bigger focus on multiplayer. While its additions are, to its credit, far more substantial than World Party, Clan Wars is best seen as a refinement on the previous game and its bounty of new ideas. That said, there’s been more than enough improvements made that it wouldn’t be a mistake to pick it up even if you have Revolution in your library. So long as you find a deep discount for it, at least.

Each of the classes get some useful bonuses that make them a little better at what they do. Even the basic soldiers now have the ability to manually detonate timed weapons like grenades, letting them potentially recover from a bad shot. Heavies make larger, more damaging explosions both with their weaponry and with their death, potentially putting more worms in the danger zone. Scouts can see what hides inside nearby crates, and will never set off mines. The scientists, in the only nerf amongst the bunch, now only provide healing to worms within a nearby radius. To be fair, it was a nerf well deserved for how much of a pain a pack of darksiding scientists could be.

A particularly nice change is that you no longer have to buy worms of each type. You’re free to set your team composition as you please from the pre-game settings, which gives you a lot more room to experiment as you’d like. Beyond this, however, it’s more of a refinement of the concepts that Revolution introduced, flaws and all. The new physics engine will still creep its way into your best laid plans, and coin crates continue to not do especially much on default settings.

There’s a new day/night cycle introduced in this game. It doesn’t do much, but it sure looks pretty.

As always, new weapons come and go, although thankfully, none of them require a DLC purchase to make use of. Some highlights include the Aqua Pack, a jetpack that releases a stream of water underneath it, causing a very high chance of flooding unprotected worms and objects right off the map. There’s also a ‘teleport gun’, which brings your worms to whatever surface it’s pointed at. Given how much of a downgrade the ninja rope was since days of Worms past, it can make for a highly efficient way to get around when you run low on regular Teleport uses.

Probably the biggest upgrade the game received is an expanded story mode, perhaps the largest draw for these games once their online multiplayer scenes expire. As the story goes, an evil hypnotist has taken over a local museum, and plans to use a giant stone carrot it contains to strengthen his powers. Only by killing all the hypnotist’s minions and using a psychic worm child to cancel out his powers can this plan be foiled. It’s honestly probably the most complicated a Worms plot has ever been, although most of it boils down to a disembodied voice telling you things you may or may not find humorous. This time around, that role would be filled by “Tara Pinkle”.

An obvious parody of Lara Croft, at least the earliest incarnation of her, the comedy is left rather out of date from the start. Since Ms. Pinkle is never seen on screen, however, the game at least avoids the many jokes about Lara’s chest it could have made. Instead, the game makes a lot of jokes where Tara casually reminds you that she’s a terrible person who loves killing people and stealing their things. It is at least somewhat of a change from the previous game’s narrator constantly dropping subtle insults towards you. Unfortunately, the joke still runs a little thin.

The single player campaign takes after the “Medieval Tales” DLC featured in the previous game. Rather than tasking you with killing every single worm, missions are about getting from Point A to Point B. The challenge isn’t about killing enemy worms, who in most cases won’t attack unless you venture too close to them. Instead, the focus is more on figuring out how to get around traps, solving the occasional physics-based puzzle, and doing the rare stint of platforming. These break up the usual Worms gameplay well enough, even if you’ll often be sitting and waiting for the other ‘team’ to decide they also want to do nothing. It can also be frustrating to figure out exactly what the game wants you to do, although the mid-mission checkpoints keep the difficulty level from being too insufferable.

There’s a safe way to get past that turret, but you might need another plan to get past the mines.

With a new Worms game, of course, comes an assortment of new weapons and tools, most of which are on the somewhat gimmicky side. The whoopee cushion bounces across the ground, releasing bouncing gas as it does so, exploding wherever it stops. The winged monkey lets you summon physics objects wherever you like, on the rare occasion when one of those are more useful than a standard weapon. The Worm Charm can be placed down to slowly heal worms and buff the damage on their attacks – with the caveat that it can be reversed with a carefully placed lightning strike. Those are generally the most interesting ideas, with the rest being variants on returning concepts, like the ‘aqua pack’ or the ‘teleport gun’.

The title of the game refers to additions made to the online multiplayer, featuring the ability to create or join your own clan, as well as creating your own emblem for it. Unfortunately, as with any Worms game that isn’t Armageddon, the recent player base is so small you’ll likely never get to enjoy these features to the fullest.

In 2014, an enhanced version of the game, Worms Battlegrounds, was released exclusively for the PS4 and XBOX One. The only exclusive content is the ‘Alien Invasion’ DLC, featuring more customization options, more ‘deathmatch’ missions. There’s also the return of the BodyCount mode, previously seen in Reloaded, where you try to survive as many rounds as you can against an infinite amount of enemy worms.

In the difficult situation where it’s so easy to say ‘just buy Armageddon’, Clan Wars is still an improvement from Revolution, with its balance tweaks and extra features. If you already have Revolution, however, there’s far less need to buy what’s basically an expansion, especially considering the feature touted in the title no longer sees any use.

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