Worms Ultimate Mayhem - Deluxe Edition

game would be a 5/5 if LAN wasn't ripped out !!!

I have the game on Steam (feat. online multiplayer), will likely buy it here for long-term (local multiplayer only which is OK - hotseat FTW). Worms Ultimate Mayhem is the best result we got from Team17 applying the classic Worms formula to a 3D game environment. It basically has everything you remember from the series: customisable worms and teams (with funny voices, wacky tombstones and ridiculous hats), an array of tools and ludicrous weapons to deploy in turn-based fights, randomly generated maps, fully destructible environments - all with great graphics and good soundscape (some catchy music, even includes a call-back to the traditional Worms theme). For sure it isn't as accessible as the 2D Worms games as the 3rd dimension does add to the complexity of moving around and pulling off an accurate shot - that said, the controls are solid, and if you've played 3rd person / 1st person 3D action games before then you'll get familiar with how to manoeuver your worms around the landscape pretty quickly. My brother is one of those people and in just the first session playing together for an hour he got the hang of it and had lots of fun (he even beat me in a match which exemplified the spirit of the series with its share of carefully laid out plans blowing up in your face and Worms falling into water and swimming like bricks). It provided the best solo experience I've had with a Worms game: I've played Worms 2, Armageddon, World Party and Reloaded - and Ultimate Mayhem has the best campaign (the Worms 4 one) and the best missions. Even the timed challenges are fun. In future, if Team17 returns to 3D Worms, I'd like to see these cool mission setups with a darker, war satirical theme à la Armageddon. This is what Worms fans were hoping to get out of Worms 3D (whose campaign is included here and benefits from better controls and GFX) - and hence I highly recommend Worms Ultimate Mayhem. There's dozens of hours of fun to be had, so step up boldly and make Boggy B proud!

Generally speaking it's a great game, it's essentially a combination of Worms 3D and Worms 4 Mayhem, featuring most (if not all?) the content from both as well as a lot of new content, so it's pretty much the perfect 3D Worms game. Unfortunately, and I don't know if this is a GOG exclusive issue, but it seems to have framerate issues on higher end monitors. I'm running the game on a 6700XT and a 170 Hz 1440p monitor and I've yet to be able to get anything resembling a smooth framerate, also the refresh rate option in the launcher appears to be broken: - If I set it to 170 Hz the framerate drops to about 60 -70 FPS and is choppy bordering on unplayable. - If I set it to 60 Hz the game appears to be running at 170 FPS but it feels more like 50-ish FPS. From what I've seen people have experienced similar issues on Steam as well, but I haven't been able to find any concrete info on what's causing it. I'll update the review if I do.

This is Worms 4 Mayhem and Worms 3D squashed together. Both great games on their own and well worth playing. But it ignores the fact that both games ran on pretty different engines. Physics, AI behavior and pretty much anything you can think of behaved differently between Worms 3D and 4. And this release imposes Worms 4 rules on everything. So yes, you can play the Worms 3D campaign in this for example, but it will play very differently from what it did originally. I personally preferred the physics from Worms 3D for example. That's not even mentioning things like losing the Worms 3D menus, theme music or level generation (which worked very differently in 3D) etc. I'm really not a fan of these "combo" releases because it is pretty much guaranteed to do dirty to one of the combo items, in this case, Worms 3D. Kind of like Unreal Tournament 2004 erased the existence of UT 2003. It's pretty much an antithesis of game preservation and future generations will receive a very skewed impression of what Worms 3D was. For that, I can't give this version more than 6/10. Just bundling the 2 original games together instead of stitching them into some sort of a hybrid would have been much more preferable.