Worms Clan Wars is the latest in the long running series that pits invertebrate against invertebrate in a nihilistic battle to the death.
Whilst the series has released regularly on consoles, it wasn’t so long ago that windows users had a six year wait for a mere console port. Now with barely a year since Worms Revolution, Clan Wars builds on its physics injected formula with ambitions of delivering a more competitive experience. Does it succeed, or is this a case of insubstantial DLC pushed out at a standalone price?
As you might expect from a game featuring earthworms there isn’t a tremendously deep story here. Crypt creeper Tara Pinkle (do you see what they did there?) advises you in your battle, across a museum’s various themed areas, to stop the evil Mesmer’s search for the golden carrot which will grant him control over all worms. It’s silly but it does at least give a proper framing to the single player which has been absent in past installments.
For those worried that controlling the worms might involve a spectral hand manipulating them into action poses, in a form of twisted claymation, you can relax. The trusty mouse and keyboard handle the action with arrow keys controlling your worm and the mouse handling surveying the environment and choosing weapons.
Whilst battling worms might conjure the image of a YouTube street fighter 2 worm fight mash-up. The reality of Clan Wars is fortunately somewhat more exciting than that. Players are given a selection of worms and have an allotted time to kill the enemy team using a selection of weapons ranging from the absurd (flying monkey and whoopee cushion) to the more traditional (uzi and bazookas).
To add complexity there are also four classes of worms that can be selected: scout (very fast, doesn’t set off mines, jumps high and far), heavy (more health, creates a large blast zone when killed but slow), scientist (heals nearby worms, gets increased time with utilities e.g. jetpack) and the standard soldier (detonates explosives at will).
The title clan wars would suggest a greater focus on competitive multiplayer with this outing and there certainly are some improvements in this area. Players are able to join clans and play in ranked leagues. Rankings are reset once a month too which prevents experienced players from becoming unreachable though it may prove frustrating for both newcomer and pro alike as they are pitted against opponents of vastly different skill levels.
The last few Worm’s games have not left a positive impression. Reloaded was a cut down version of a game that came out nearly 12 years ago with the added ‘bonus’ of poor performance and a reduced feature set. Revolution did make a genuine effort to move the series forward by introducing physics oriented hazards, chiefly water, however the performance was still a bit spotty.
Clan Wars once again favours physics based combat however the application is inconsistent. Water will wash worms away but dropping a giant rock on a worm’s head does no harm. The performance front also does not improve on Revolution as gameplay feels jerky and unresponsive.
Poor performance is acceptable in a visually ground breaking game but Clan Wars does not look good enough to suffer from such inconsistent speed. Fortunately the audio in the game is of a high standard as Tara Pinkle is voiced by the IT Crowd’s Katherine Parkinson and she does a good job of sending up Lara Croft’s gentrified accent.
Worms Clan Wars feels unpolished. Several patches have already been released and have made some headway to address this however at its heart the Worms experience has been slowed down too much. Had the title chosen to focus more on physics puzzles then this would have been acceptable however as a frantic multiplayer game it loses the momentum and just becomes stagnant too quickly.
