At a glance...

Worms Forts: Under Siege review

The Worms series has always consisted of great light-hearted games from the word go (Banana Bomb, anyone?), spawning several 2D editions before slightly clumsily making its leap into the third dimension in 2003, with the aptly named Worms 3D. A precursor to Worms 4: Mayhem, Worms Forts: Under Siege uses the 3D style of Worms 3D to bring a different type of gameplay to the table—but don't worry, it's not as huge a leap as that from traditional Worms to Worms Blast.

Worms Forts, as the name may suggest, pits worm against worm in a game of fortress-based conquest. One of a number of predefined maps is chosen—no option to randomly generate here—which gives each team a stronghold in a corner of the map. From here, the teams have to extend their fortresses with different buildings, whilst attempting to beat the crap out of the opposing sides. The game is won when either all of the opposing worms have been killed, or everyone else's stronghold has been destroyed.

Buildings play a vital role in Worms Forts, and can be broken up into two categories; military, and non-military. Military buildings provide platforms for worms to use powerful weaponry (who's up for a Chilli Con Carnage?), with more powerful weapons accompanying more highly ranked buildings. Worms still have a limited arsenal when they aren't on a building, but they aren't going to be winning any matches. Non-military buildings can't be directly used by worms, but enable worms to do more; a hospital allows you to resurrect ex-worms, whilst various research buildings enable a larger variety of weaponry.

For the fans of single-player Worms, Worms Forts provides a mission-based storyline, which allows you to unlock features such as arenas and weapons for multiplayer games. This is your fairly standard Worms fare, with a number of sequential missions based in various historical settings.

As with more recent “traditional” Worms games, to add a bit of variety into the mix, Worms Forts provides a number of game modifiers available via the Fortpot (AKA Wormpot). Whilst by itself this is as good as in other Worms games, the lack of randomly generated levels and explosive-based land reformation present in its siblings means that Worms Forts can become repetitive and stale. The joy of slowly blowtorching your way through to a deeply buried opponent who is on the verge of death, or flying a Super Sheep into the middle of a bunch of explosives is part of the charm of Worms, and without it, Worms Forts suffers.

Worms Forts has the same “cartoony” style graphics as Worms 3D which, while not terrible, isn't at the height of graphical power—in Worms 3D, at least the terrain can be blown to bits. Still, in a game like Worms, the graphics really don't make any difference—Worms World Party is just as fun as Worms 3D, and I never found myself saying “I really wish the graphics were higher quality.” Likewise with the sounds; there are no long cinematic scores performed by orchestras, just fitting music and the traditional variety of Worm voices.

To survive in Worms Forts, you need a very well trained thumb; whilst the general controls are easy enough to master, the overhead view (for targeting air-based weapons such as the Homing Pidgeon and Napalm Strike) has frustratingly sensitive controls. Often, in my experience, it would take several attempts before successfully aiming an airbourne weapon; whether this is an oversight from the PC version, with its better mouse-based control, I'm not sure, but it certainly is annoying.

If you're a fan of the Worms series, Worms Forts is an enjoyable variation on the games which could be worth looking into, but don't come to it expecting full-on traditional Worms gameplay.

Ratings

Click here to buy Worms Forts: Under Siege from Amazon.co.uk.

Copyright Information

Website design and content (c) 1999-2012 allaboutgames.co.uk.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License, except where otherwise noted.

Smileys taken from Crack's Smilies.