Despite countless sequels, Team 17’s turn-based strategy series has struggled to better 1999’s Worms Armageddon. The developer knows it, too; Worms WMD is based on the fan-favourite game’s source code, and the Steam release of Armageddon has been consistently updated, most recently with a major patch in 2020. Now, Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition celebrates 25 years of wiggly warfare, and it’s still lots of fun.
This version essentially brings the modernised PC build to consoles and throws in some extras. The Game Boy version is included and fully playable, while a War Stories section takes you through the origins of Worms. It features interviews with key figures, interesting asides, design documentation, and more. If you like your industry history, Digital Eclipse has provided a decent Worms lesson here.
But what of the main event? Well, it’s Worms Armageddon, only with a significantly higher resolution, online multiplayer (sadly not crossplay), and a modest set of Trophies. The single player is still relatively robust but the structure and difficulty spikes mean it really shows its age. Similarly, the menus throughout can be a little confusing to navigate, and the controls can be initially tricky to work out, and the presentation is broadly quite archaic.
However, once you’re over those hurdles, this remains a highly entertaining strategy game with lots of ways to play. Its big strengths are its friendship-making/destroying multiplayer and thorough customisation options, letting you make your own rulesets, teams, and procedurally generated maps. However you choose to engage with it, the game’s short turns, cartoonish physics, and wide array of weapons all contribute to a good time, whether it’s in small bursts or long multiplayer sessions.
When you’re in the thick of a match, using a baseball bat to smack a worm into the water, blowing up a cluster of enemies with a well-placed sheep, or expertly crossing the map with a ninja rope, only to botch the landing and start a chain reaction of mines and exploding barrels, all the rough edges erode away. Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition is a warts-and-all revival of a game that, 25 years later, still has it where it counts, and there aren’t too many titles that can make that claim.