For those of you who have never played any of the main games of the Worms series (Worms, Worms 2, Worms Armageddon, Worms World Party, Worms 3D, Worms Blast, etc.), think of it as a much evolved version of the good old turn-based tank-shooter games, only with worms, crazy weapons, and hilarious voices.

I started playing Worms 2 some years back and World Party is my main 'I'll just play one round before I start on homework, or maybe two, or three, or ten' game. A few weeks back, I decided to download the demo for Worms 3D, which, as the name suggests, is the first 3D incarnation of the series. I started up the game, picked the single player mode and watched as the battlefield loaded. The graphics weren't bad and seemed to keep with the nature of the series. But then it was my turn and before I knew it, I was scrambling to figure out how to play since the controls were rather different from what I was used to in previous games.

A few pathetic attempts later, I quit the single player mode and decided to try the two-player game in a final attempt at learning the controls. Since I was controlling both teams, I was able to play around with the different weapons without getting destroyed by the computer. It turned out the control scheme actually wasn't half bad, although joysticks would be much better than the keyboard. The main complaint I have is that motion of the worm is relative to the camera. The arrow keys move rotate the camera but occasionally it will auto-rotate to give you a better view of the worm. Unfortunately, if you happen to be walking in one direction using the W key (let's say North) with the camera at your back, and the camera auto-adjusts to give you a better view from the left side, pressing W will actually send the worm to the side (East), while A will continue moving the worm North. Although I got used to it, it still causes problems once in a while.

Besides moving, the actual gameplay is fairly solid, but also takes some time to get used to, even for people who are used to the Worms series. The number one challenge: wind, followed by gravity. Since the battlefield is a 3D environment, wind is no longer limited to two directions. Being able to use the wind to bend attacks around corners, etc seemed like something only CPU players could do well in the 2D games, but in 3D, it becomes absolutely crucial to the gameplay. There is a wind gauge which shows wind speed and direction, and, like in previous games, the wind stays constant for the duration of the turn, but it's entirely up to the player to predict the effect the wind will have on each attack. After a few rounds though, gauging the wind's effect becomes easier and attacks become more reliable.

Gravity is a bit easier to deal with since it's a constant for the entire match (unless something like Low Gravity is activated, but that's not available in the demo, so I'm not sure how it'll affect things). Like in the previous games, Worms 3D's physics engine is extremely good, so I made sure to aim high. However, what I didn't realize was that appearances can be deceiving and most of the time when I thought I was aiming far above the target in the main window, it turned out I was aiming more or less at it. I soon realized the trick was to use the attack angle meter in the bottom left corner to figure out if I was actually aiming at a high enough angle. Like with the wind, after a few rounds, I had developed enough intuition that I could aim reliably from the main window without the meter. As a result of having to compensate for both the wind and gravity, I've often found myself aiming over open space or high into the sky, which makes the game a bit more challenging by seemingly defying logic.

Of course, the best part of any Worms game is the actual attacking part. Most of the attacks, like the Bazooka, Grenade, Fire Punch, Sheep, and Homing Pigeon stayed virtually unchanged except for adding a third dimension of motion (Although getting into a good angle and position for using Fire Punch isn't always easy in the 3D environment and the Homing Pigeon took some time to figure out). This helped the game stay true to the series. Others, like the Banana Bomb and especially the Air Strike were pretty bad. The Banana Bomb doesn't seem to explode in a spherical shape as you would expect it to, so you really don't get the devastating coverage it had in 2D. The Air Strike is even worse. The bombs land in a line as expected, but the aiming system is so bad that many times it will bomb the space a little in front of or behind the target, doing no damage at all. Finally, they seem to have tweaked some of the weapons, like the Shotgun. In the older games, the Shotgun was devastating since it gave you two shots in one turn and rarely did less than 25 points damage per shot. In Worms 3D, the Shotgun wobbles as you aim it. Some might consider this a major problem, but to me it seems like a good idea since it causes no problems when attacking nearby opponents, but makes it difficult to pick off an enemy on the other end of the battlefield. This was always the case in the older games since the aiming sight only extended for a little bit in front of the gun, so I see the handicap as being the best they could do to emulate the 2D handicap in 3D, where the aiming sight is a lot like that of a first-person shooter.

Overall, I'd say Worms 3D is a decent game but falls short of what I was expecting from the series. It's somewhat like a blend of a first-person shooter and a traditional 2D Worms game and is creative in its approach to translating a 2D series to 3D. The voices are, of course, great, and the graphics aren't bad either. The controls and basic gameplay are harder to grasp at first than even the 2D versions, but can be mastered after playing several rounds (assuming you read the directions first, which I didn't before the first match). It's fun to play but not something I'm going to be buying anytime soon.

If you want to download the demo, here's the link: Worms 3D Demo Download Page

Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.