Revisiting a classic title from yesteryear, especially when it has been released roughly as-is in terms of its overall gameplay and sensibilities, is always a dicey affair. Especially when the game being celebrated is more than 2 decades old, reuniting with an old friend can be a very odd experience. Weirdly, my experience with this multiplayer style of play pre-dates the Worms series with memories of playing Scorched Earth (though we just called it Scorch) in college with my friends. I did play Worms a bit in the earlier days, but always on the PC, where it worked well, certainly had a goofy sense of humor, and continued in that same vein I already knew, but with a ridiculous number of weapons and skills for getting around that absolutely added flavor.

Now, coming back to this classic so many years down the road, and on console, it’s absolutely a bit of a shock to the system, and honestly early on I found it to be quite a struggle. One part of my difficulty is absolutely my fault in not going to the menu option to review the controls, but very honestly I rarely consult those for any game since what I’m really interested in is how intuitive they are. Sure, I was absolutely spoiled by the convenience and sensibility of using a mouse the last time I played the game, but I naively expected that knowing how simple they really were, that I’d quickly get the hang of the console controls. I was wrong. Even once I did figure them out though I’ll very much admit that I wasn’t a fan of how movement and aiming were prone to getting confused, and the power gauge really requires time to digest and understand with different weapons. Even recalling some of the weirdo weapons from back in the day, there were many I obviously didn’t remember with how they worked, and since some can be quite quirky it tended to make for very ineffective trial and error getting back up to speed.

I think what I’m trying to point out here, though perhaps I’m preaching to the choir who already understand this, is that this is really a game for the people who remember it and are looking to get a taste of the fun with their friends from a few decades ago. If you’ve still got a grasp of it all, with a little time you’ll probably get your legs once more and, especially if you have friends to play with locally, you’ll likely have a great time blowing each other up, laughing at the people who manage to accidentally kill themselves, and just loving the nostalgia of it all. If, however, you’re new to it, or only know the more recent releases, you could likely struggle to get started and then be motivated to stick with it, especially if you’re only going to play it solo, since it really is a relic, even if a pretty important one in the overall history of games. The fact that it was also released a while ago may not make its online play prospects great, or you could easily get stuck with the true pros at this point, rather than a rush of fellow newbies to stand a chance against. As a piece of gaming history it’s a dead accurate and important title to understand and appreciate. But as a contemporary game to regularly pull out and enjoy? That may be more of a stretch.