Today, You Should Fill Your Switch With Worms

Team17’s Worms series has been around for about as long as I’ve been playing games; that’s just over 20 years now.

I remember playing the very first Worms with my father, guffawing as we blew each other to smithereens. Since then I’ve dabbled with the 20 or so subsequent releases, with 1999’s Worms Armageddon being my most fondly remembered.

Hand on heart, 2D Worms is the best Worms – it just plays and looks better that way – which is why I’m over the moon that the latest Worms game, Worms W.M.D, took the series well and truly back to its 2D roots. And now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can play a proper game of Worms anywhere, courtesy of the Nintendo Switch.

Released today, Worms W.M.D on the Nintendo Switch is everything you could hope for. No compromises have been made in porting it over, which means it looks great, runs silky smooth and has more content than your local garden centre. Honestly, if you’re a Worms fan like myself, it’s an essential purchase.

Whether you’re playing in docked or handheld mode, Worms W.M.D’s visuals are absolutely teeming with detail. Thanks to the Switch’s high resolution screen, playing on the go still allows you to make out all of your Worm customisations, and, more importantly, the pesky landmines that litter your path. Past portable Worms games have had to make compromises to work on a small screen, but here, you’re getting the full fat experience.

Alongside a suite of multiplayer options that allow you to take on others in both online and local battles, Worms W.M.D features the most single player content I’ve ever witnessed in a Worms game. There are tutorials to help you brush up your skills, 30 Campaign missions for you to complete with multiple optional objectives, a range of challenges, and then a smattering of extra and bonus missions on top; it really is rather generous.

The joy of Worms is that you don’t need missions or objectives to have fun though, simply engaging in spineless warfare is all the reward you need. Outside of battle you can have hours of fun creating your own little band of worms, choosing their names, outfits, voices and more, and once you’ve done that you can create your own gameplay schemes too.

Nearly everything about your Worms W.M.D experience can be tweaked to your pleasure, and combined with the series’ penchant for randomly generated maps, it’s the perfect game to go back to time and time again. Even after all these years of play I still chuckle at unleashing a super sheep at an unsuspecting enemy, and revel in skillfully using a jetpack to take out a precariously placed adversary half a map away. Worms is timeless – it never gets old – and even though there’s been some new additions to the formula over the years they haven’t taken away from the focus of comedic worm-on-worm action.

In Worms W.M.D, features such as vehicles and buildings that you can enter make a return. You can turn them off if you want, but they add variety and strategy to battles. Being able to take control of a tank may seem overpowered, but then the realisation kicks in that its mobility is limited. Meanwhile, helicopters give you a great deal of freedom, but they become hard to control when firing a barrage downwards. Worms works because it’s wonderfully balanced, and the new additions do little to upset that balance in this case.

If you have any love in your heart for Team17’s pink little tykes then, Worms W.M.D is a must-have. For £19.99 you can have the best version of Worms since Worms Armageddon available for you to play absolutely anywhere. If that doesn’t float your boat, I don’t know what will.