Worms Ultimate Mayhem Review

You ain’t messing with my wiggle.

Have you ever seen one of those hotdog eating competitions; the ones where competitors dunk their entire hotdog in water before they eat it? Even if it’s a tasty Ball Park Frank, they need just that little edge to get it all down. That’s a bit of the situation when playing Worms: Ultimate Mayhem. Where’s Kobayashi when you need him? All of the added gigots and gadgets partially help digest the new Worms format. After all of the Worm titles, Ultimate Mayhem is meant to be a refreshed and combined version of Worms 3D and Worms 4: Mayhem.

Worms, plainly enough, is a classic. I remember playing the first one on my old ass Macintosh computer. I could spend hours trying to eliminate red or blue team. Back then, all you could customize were team names and names of individual worms. Now with Ultimate Mayhem, you can create guns, worm attire, and even build levels to fight in.

Through the years, the Worms series has relatively stayed the same. The major change came when the format and graphics switched over to 3D, a major mistake against the authenticity of the originals. Yes, it is still Worms; you wiggle around, thumbing through a plethora of weapons you may use in order to destroy the opposition. But the feel of the first Worms games just isn’t there.

There’s an upside, though. With plenty of extra playable content, one has the option to enjoy a diverse selection of other game modes. Getting tired of shooting rockets back and forth? Play in the skills challenge or, better yet, hop in a story mode and really wreak havoc. But bring your game when playing online; there definitely are some Worms veterans on the scene.

My preferred way of playing was to just blow stuff up, all the time. Times I wasn’t even trying to beat the level, just blow shit up. There’s a fun Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoonish element to Ultimate Mayhem. That’s what mainly kept my attention, so I just ran with it.

For those who have played the classic 1995 version and truly liked it, Worms: Ultimate Mayhem may be a sizable letdown. The mechanics of the game are the same, but much has changed. It all makes sense, though; developer Team17 has to come up with something new and edgy for each title if they still want copies to sell. People get bored, but it would have been fine to stop producing remakes and hang their heads on PC old-school greatness. Ultimate Mayhem is worth playing just to see how things have changed. So check it out on your PC, Xbox360, or wait later this year for it to be released on PS3. Plus it’s cheap so you won’t go broke on this one.

Review is based on the XBLA version. Code was provided by Team17.