Worms Rumble

With Worms Rumble, the legendary franchise leaves behind its turn-based battles and dives headlong into action.

It’s been more than 25 years since the legendary Worms captivated players on all platforms with its comical turn-based battles. The Holy Hand Grenade, the explosive sheep and the banana bomb are already weapons that put a smile on the face of the most gamers just by naming them. Over the years, Worms has had countless sequels (the last one was the interesting Worms WMD), but they were always based on turn-based combat… Until its latest release in which Team 17 joins the Battle Royale trend.

The base concept is the same as always. We control a worm and, with the arsenal at our disposal, we have to eliminate the others by moving through labyrinth-style scenarios. The big change in this installment is that it is no longer turn based, but, from the moment the battle begins, everything takes place in real time... a frenetic real time.

Luckily, the worms are not as slow as usual and move quite fast, thanks mainly to a rolling move that we can use almost constantly, as long as the stamina meter allows it. In addition, we can jump and our worm automatically sticks to the nearest wall, and then slips down little by little. Combining this with the typical jetpack or ninja rope is the key to moving at full speed and surprising our opponents.

When it comes to attacking, we start with a basic weapon (it might be a bazooka, a revolver, etc., depending on what we have previously assigned), but by exploring the map or eliminating rivals, we can find other weapons, from a sheep launcher to a sentry gun. We can only have one main weapon and one reserve weapon, but there is also room for grenades, which can be the classic or the holy ones, with a much wider range of action.

Finally, there is room for utilities such as the jetpack and we can also assign ourselves an object to recover health: a first aid kit or a drink that also gives us some shielding.

As there can be up to 32 worms in the battle, it is sometimes a good idea to go to where there are large firefights and take advantage of the situation to eliminate the worms that are weakened and distracted by another opponent. If we are the ones who die, we will reappear after a few seconds. The rounds last 8 minutes, during which the objective is to achieve as many casualties as possible.

This is the case in Deathmatch mode, one of the 3 that are available, as well as a training session. The second mode is Last Team Standing: in teams of 3 worms, we have to cooperate to eliminate the other teams and, if we are killed, our teammates have a few seconds to revive us. If they don't, we are eliminated from the game and can only watch to see how our peers are doing.

The third mode is Last Worm Standing. It’s the same, but now we’re alone. If we are killed once, it’s bye-bye for good, we just have to watch how the others do it until the time is up. In the latter two modes, the stage is also gradually filled with toxic areas, so the playing field is narrowed and we are forced to face the others.

Worms Rumble constantly tempts us to keep playing to level up and unlock new customization elements, such as more designs for weapons, helmets, clothes, new textures for the annelids, etc… And, of course, speech banks are back, both for the worms and the game commentators. They are all very funny (we love the sarcastic voices, for example), but they are only available in English, French, German and Chinese, with no trace of the traditional Spanish voices. The texts are well translated, though.

On a technical level, it is a very good game, with constant explosions and special actions such as gigantic rockets that are activated in the middle of the game. Although the tradition of destroying the scenery little by little with our attacks does not apply here, there are many objects that can be broken to open new paths.

Overall, Worms Rumble is a Battle Royale that gets to the point, knows what it wants and does it surprisingly well. The traditional concept of the saga has been very cleverly adapted to real time and is tremendously addictive in the first sessions.