It was inevitable that the highly successful Worms series of games would eventually go 3D, especially as Team17’s Lemmings games had gone down the route earlier. It’s a game both my wife and I had wanted to get for quite some time, and when it appeared on the Sold Out Software label (£4.99 per game or 3 for £10), w snapped it up.

Worms, for the uninitiated, is a turn-based strategy game where two or more teams of worms armed with conventional and not-so-conventional weapons slug it out on a field of battle till only one team are left standing. What made the games so fun were the animations of the worms, the insane weaponry (featuring Sheep, Mad Cow, grumbling Old Woman, poisonous Skunk, and the awesomely powerful Holy Hand Grenade), and the speech samples. As with previous games, there are several speech sets you can choose from (“Geordie” is one of the funniest here) – Alien, Pirate, etc. The quips as worms mange or fail to blow their enemies (and sometimes allies) up are often funny though as in all the games, in the end they get samey. Still, it’s the reaction on the face of the person next to you as they misjudge a jump and end up plummeting into the ocean that’s the really funny bit.

The aesthetics are well up to the job although not mind-blowing. The worms have ported over nicely to 3D, and some added touches brought a smile – occasionally a worm waiting for its turn plucks its eyebrows out, places them below the eyes as a moustache and smiles widely; at other times, they decide to flap their arms around as if trying to fly. The homing pigeon sitting on a worm’s head always makes me smile, too. Also quit funny is their reaction if you train a weapon on them from close range – they might gulp, hold their head in terror, or rapidly shake their head (if they’re on the aiming worm’s team!). The landscape graphics are pretty good too and, of course, fully destructible. One of the things that helps to keep the games from becoming too repetitive is that each landscape is randomly generated from a set of initial values you give it – like size of land blocks, distance between, number of objects, etc. You can also set various things on and off to make for more game modes – i.e. certain weapons cause double damage, more create drops (crates contain special weapons or useful items), etc. The sound seems to have been given more consideration, too – the effects are more atmospheric, the music better, and there’s even an infuriatingly catchy (or annoying, depending on your point of view) theme tune.

There is a large range of weapons including a couple of new ones to the series, though in this 3D environment many of the old favourites have to be practically re-learned because their behaviour is much different from in the 2D games. (There is a tutorial mode for those not already familiar with the series.) There are some one-player missions as well to add a bit of variety, and these tend to appear easy but be rather more challenging to actually complete. They do add an extra appeal to the game if there’s no-one else around to do battle with and you don’t feel like playing against the computer (AI opponents can be set at various levels including downright stupid if you want!). There is also the option to play multiplayer games over a network or the internet, but somehow it’s just not the same – half the enjoyment of the game is the real-life banter between players and this just can’t be replicated on the computer.

The actual games in Worms 3D tend to be much shorter than in the 2D games. This is because you have a large number of land edges for your worms to be knocked off of. This means it’s actually better for a quick game but somehow I tend to get bored of it quicker than Worms Armageddon, my favourite game in the series (so far, anyway). It’s worth getting even if you have other Worms games though as it’s quite a different gaming experience, and I do enjoy playing it. If the Worms games have never appealed to you in the past, this one might just be different enough to pique your interest.

Age rating: 3

Minimum Specs

OS: Windows 98 / Me / XP
CPU: 800MHz
HDD space: 1.5Gb (comes on 2 CD-ROMS)
DirectX: 9.0a
RAM: 256Mb

Tested On:

OS: Windows XP Home Edition SP2
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz
RAM: 768Mb
Graphics card: 256Mb (GeForce 5500 FX)
DirectX 9.0c


Bugs – we did have some problems with the game crashing occasionally. The official game website – www.worms3d.com - one of the FAQs suggested decreasing the resolution and increasing the refresh rate. We did so – from 1024x768 to 800x600 and from 60Hz to 75Hz – and have had no further problems.


(NB - if the product title is still "Worms for Windows", it should read "Worms 3D for Windows" and I have filed a bug report.)

Recommended: Yes