Grade: B+
War, as we all know, is hell. But if it involves small squeaky annelids blowing each-other up with bazookas, it is also hella fun. And so to the newest installment in the long-running turn-based strategy series Worms. Can it be a coincidence that Worms Across Worlds arrives on Apple Arcade just in time for the release of Philip Pullman’s final His Dark Materials book? Yes, it absolutely can.
Nevertheless the latest Worms, like Pullman’s work, is set in a multiverse in which intrepid heroes travel through portals between worlds. The world of Worms, like the world of His Dark Materials, mingles science and experimental theology: you can see off rival worms with a nuclear strike or a holy hand grenade. But nowhere in Philip Pullman’s work, I don’t think, does the Magisterium drop a concrete donkey on its enemies.
If you have neither time nor inclination for triple-A games on consoles, there’s still a lot of fun to be had with pick-up gaming (i.e., messing around on your phone) and Worms is a great pick-up game. Your team of worms, scattered over a cartoon landscape, take turns to strike enemy worms with a range of ridiculous weapons – air-strikes, baseball bats, banana bombs, or explosive sheep. There’s a long tutorial mode for noobs, a gentle difficulty curve, and accidentally blowing your own worms and half the landscape up with a chain-reaction of explosions is nearly as fun as picking off your opponents.
It’s graphically cute, unrelentingly silly, definitely moreish, and the squeaky-voiced sound effects (‘Hadouken!’ ‘Just you wait!’ ‘Bye bye!’) are a delight. It’s very much more of the same, but that’s fine by me.
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