A lot of the games coming out these days seem to be sequels. This is a safe bet for publishers, because they already have a good estimate of how many people will like their new games. Most of us are not publishers though, and we are getting a bit bored of playing the same mediocre games all the time. Not all sequels are uninspired ways of making money of course, there are developers that make an effort to find new exciting ways to tell old stories. Team17 is trying to do this with their famous Worms series right now, and it looks like they're doing a fine job. The Worms games are a series of turnbased battle games where teams of worms duke it out with an enormous array of weapons, for those of you that didn't know.

Worms 3D marks the garden crawlers' debut in the third dimension. It seems like ages ago when games had '3D' in their names, but Team17 has a good reason for waiting this long. They wanted to be able to make the first 3D Worms a true Worms game, and we all know what that means. Yes, it needs to have funny voices, but that's not what we're getting at. The thing that made Worms games fun to play was that you were able to destroy everyting. Every hole your rockets or grenades would blast in the environment stayed in place, so after a battle the levels would look like a Swiss cheese. Team17 wanted to wait until they could do completely destructable levels in 3D, and we're glad they did. Thanks to their voxel powered engine you will be able to blow it all to bits.

We received an early test version of the game, which unfortunately still was pretty buggy. Our version crashed a lot, making it difficult to get a good idea of the different game modes. What we did see however, was very nice. There are single player campaigns and challenges, as well as a training mode. The campaigns are funny little story based levels, the challenges are levels with specific goals, like shooting bullseyes with just a shotgun. The mode that crashed the least was the multiplayer mode. In this mode you can set up everything from computer controlled worms to the height of your randomly generated level. After setting up your game all your worms are dumped on the level and the action begins.

It's great to see how well the feel of the 2D Worms games is translated to a 3D environment. It looks different and it plays different, but it feels nicely familiar. Most of the weapons from the old games are back, but we didn't see a lot of new ones. We'll probably have to wait for the final version to see new arms, Team17 explains on their site that they usually include new weapons near the completion of their games. The old weapons work great, and the 3D aiming and wind makes them feel new enough to forgive the lack of new ones. Some of the weapons even feel more balanced in 3D. Your homing missiles for instance, will hit pieces of landscape more often now thanks to the 3D wind, making it less unfair to use. But the best thing about the gameplay is that everything just really feels like Worms always did; the way you have to experiment with your aiming every turn, the crazy situations that you get into after misjudging the wind, causing your rockets to fly right back at you, and the joy you feel after you've thrown a cluster grenade all across the level, right next to one of your opponent's worms.

The camera is done quite well during play, it automatically moves along with your worm, but is also movable with the C-stick. With R you go into first person aiming mode, great for precision shotgun attacks, and with L you go into topdown view. The camera gets a bit irritating after you've fired your shot though, often the camera angle is off, resulting in you not seeing your beautifully planned attack in action. A minor issue that will undoubtedly be solved in the final version. Graphically the game doesn't make you jump out of your seat in amazement, but it will make you laugh out loud. Just aim your Uzi at a worm from close by, he'll look really scared and will start begging for his life. All the worm animations look pretty nice, from their jumps to their attacks. The terrains are filled with strange objects, just like in the old games, expect to fight on bridges, zeppelins, computers and much more. Team17 are promising a lot of different environments to fight in, just download our second direct-feed movie to see a crazy example, World War 2 will never be the same again!

The test version we played didn't reveal a lot, but all it did show was very nice. From what we've seen, Worms 3D has the potential to become a really good party game, now let's just hope they put the Holy Handgrenade back in!

UPDATE: 2003-09-28

At a recent Sega event in Holland we were able to play a little more of the new Worms game. The version we played there didn't crash a single time, so we were able to see a bit more of the game than we could with our test version. Apart from fixing the crashes, Team17 also spiced up the graphics, the menus and loading screens. The camera still needs attention though, you're still not always able to see the full effect of your violent actions.

One of the things we enjoyed more of this time is the single player mode. When you're playing alone, you can choose between a tutorial mode, a campaign mode and a challenge mode. Old news, you might say, but this time we were able to try out a few campaign mode levels. They are set up pretty much like they were in the old Worms games, you get a selection of arms and fight a bunch of computer controlled worms in a funny surrounding. The surroundings in Worms 3D are easily as funny as the ones you had in the previous Worms games, you get to fight on top of a desk complete with computer for instance. There are a lot of campaigns to choose from, so the single player mode should keep you occupied for quite some time.

Of course we couldn't resist playing a few multiplayer games with some of our gaming press colleagues. The multiplayer mode is still loads of fun, expect a lot of screaming and cheering in your living room during Worms 3D sessions. One thing we noticed though, was that you have to play the game with one controller. This means you have to give it to the next player after every turn, but also that you don't need four controllers to start a multiplayer game. Wavebirds should really come in handy here, as they'll avoid beers being tipped over by controller cords.

That's it for now, but expect to read more on Worms 3D at Cube-Europe in the future. In the meantime, you can read Tim's interview with Martyn Brown from Team17 and take a look at our direct-feed movies.

See the game in action in five exclusive movies by following this link: Worms 3D Movies.