I do not enjoy The Fast and the Furious franchise. Nnot even Hobbs and Shaw. I have tried to sit through them for years, and the increasing absurdity actually detracts from the movies themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t pretend they’re all bad. I would say the movies started out with a decent concept, and proceeded to improve with more and more dramatic ideas and reaches. I don’t think I’m alone to say that Fast Five is the best, giving the best of heists, characters and stupidity without going overboard. But once you hit that apex, the decline afterwards is noticeable and painful. It’s the same way I feel about the Worms series of games, and why I am so thrilled that my rose tinted glasses haven’t let me down as I greedily, gladly embrace Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition.

It is crazy that Worms Armageddon is only the third title in the series, and yet it perfectly embodies everything that makes the games amazing and exciting. A turn based strategy game, you control a team of four worms who are hellbent on destroying all other teams out there. Whereas the previous games were well balanced in certain aspects, it’s the over-the-top degree of munitions and mayhem that makes Armageddon such a standout title. You’ve got the bazooka, shotgun, landmines…things you’ve come to know and love. But here come items that are positively wild, like the longbow, the skunk and the aqua sheep, not to mention many you probably missed because you didn’t pick up Worms: Director’s Cut. You’re probably still going to stick to air strikes, baseball bats and the coveted prod, but new features are here, and they’re fabulous.

People who are confused about Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition do not seem to understand the trajectory and importance of Worms. More importantly, they don’t know just what it means to enjoy Worms Armageddon as a beast separate from the rest of the series. Thankfully, it seems the gaming and history enthusiasts at Digital Eclipse know what’s up, because they’ve wisely used the Armageddon title as their entrypoint into not just the hands down best game in the Worms series, but a good masthead on what is shaping up to be a full fledged collection of Worms games from across the years. It’ll be some time before the announced additional games are added, but, thankfully, we have the best one front and center, now, and we can enjoy it with all the bells and whistles you’ve come to expect from Digital Eclipse.

Worms Armageddon encompasses three things that were new for the series and became mainstays, and thankfully still exist in exquisite detail for the Anniversary Edition. The customization, hitherto a more simple motif, was a key factor in giving your team a theme, a bunch of names and even voices that could be from around the world or your own microphone. It sounds hokey and almost a given in today’s post Skyrim world of ultra fine character creation, but being able to name your team “South Dorm,” give all four worms the names of you and your quad mates and then recording your own obnoxious voices for their reactions? It was a marvel of the digital age, and one step closer to the Singularity. Or at least being able to laugh like an idiot when your worm yelled obscenities in a bad accent whenever a grenade landed with lethal finality.

Additionally, the solo campaign, which still works out marvelously as both a tutorial and a longform entertainment avenue, is still delightfully intact. One of the biggest problems from the original Worms games were that the CPU wasn’t particularly diverse in their approaches, so it didn’t give players a lot of opportunity to practice strategy without another player handy. Sure, the bazooka is clearly the classic, but what about getting better with other weapons? Thankfully, the solo missions diversify targets and goals, giving players many chances to figure out how truly trash they are with the ninja rope. Oh, and you can unlock achievements and stuff, but getting humbled by a game is still the best thing ever.

Lastly, online multiplayer. Yes, while this is an obvious given in today’s landscape of games and worldwide connectivity, the 90s was still a wild west for anyone who didn’t work in tech or the government. So being able to access WormNet – Team17’s answer to an online hub of activity – was a godsent, even if you were rocking a modem. While this feature isn’t necessary for the Anniversary Edition, the framework that was constructed help make sure this title was the one that people remember most fondly and got the most play out of. Being able to also have hotseat play (swapping between players on a single keyboard/controller) meant that you and a friend could have a go at two other people somewhere in the world either on the same team or as a four player royale.

So, how does Worms Armageddon hold up? On the one hand, Digital Eclipse did a wonderful job in preserving the game as it was and making sure that it can function and perform on current platforms as good as possible. It’s got some edges to the sprites and landscapes, a consequence of resolutions getting significantly better in the past two decades. The animations are solid but clearly lacking some of the finesse and cartoonish extra that come with later iterations of the series. In that same vein, the landscapes and maps are very, very repetitive: while there’s a decent variety in what “kind” of map you fight on, it’s still the same destructible ground as you might think, with a watery consequence waiting on several of them. It doesn’t really reinvent the wheel, but it also doesn’t need to for the gameplay to work.

I also realize that I played Worms Armageddon predominantly on the PC in my youth, because the controller layout takes some real getting used to. Movement and jumping are easy enough, but opening up the weapons menu, using the joystick as a mouse cursor controller and then still needing to pick angle, strength and sometimes timer for the weapon is a chore. Mix in that you may need to move quite a bit to line up your shot and the sixty seconds of preset turn time feels like it’s over way, way too fast when you’re frantically doing backflips instead of shooting like you were intending. That’s my bad: I have the memory of a goldfish and panic made me mix up the buttons. Like, a lot.

Having said that, though, Worms Armageddon still has the same fun factor that the classic Worms games always had, and I was able to share that with a new audience pretty easily. It’s an ideal game for multiplayer but one controller: just do your turn and then hand it over to the next person. The order never changes, so you don’t get confused about who needs to be the captain next. Instead, this gave me and my kids plenty of chances to strategize and analyze each other’s choices while we played to get a better idea of the type of combat they preferred. My older child, for example, really liked taking chances with wind and timing for grenades. My younger child liked to use the bazooka at close range because violence. We learn new and terrifying things every day.

And it’s still crazy amounts of fun. This kind of hyper mayhem that’s still cute and bloodless is a fantastic entertainment tool, and it plays really well without being too complex. Worms Armageddon worked well because it had those pressure cooker notions – the Deathmatch elements of one hit kills or the rising sea level – with the ability to hurl an exploding sheep at your friends and family. It was able to balance what could be considered “stressful” gameplay with a hilarious setting and unironically using the word “Armageddon” in the title without it being grim and awful. It’s got balance, poise and play, and it does so at a vector that can appeal to everyone.

Plus, as you must expect, Digital Eclipse did justice to the history of the game and of Team17 with Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition. The War Stories is a delightful timeline that gives you an interactive peek into the inception of the franchise as well as the rise of the Armageddon title specifically. The interviews, advertisements, game manuals and sketches all craft a fantastic expose of how influential and exciting Worms was across the world, and why the games are still so fondly remembered. My one complaint is that the details are sometimes sparse, with some entries having just a single image and a couple of lines of text. I know there isn’t a ton to say about WormNet in general, but I think I was anticipating a little more. The 73 screenshots of the Dreamcast VMU images, however, were phenomenal.

Also included with the launch is the Gameboy version of Worms Armageddon, and that’s certainly a piece of history that you can play around with if you wish. Let’s be honest: it’s rough. It’s as rough as you can imagine a Gameboy title, which was already designed towards the end of the handheld’s life cycle, being tasked with emulating a detailed, strategy driven PC game, and then making it comfortable and feasible to play with only two buttons and a D pad. The execution is surprisingly great for the time, with the choice to make it a pass and play instead of even entertaining link cable action. It looks as rough as you’d imagine, but the game makes for quite the conversation piece AND a good challenge for longtime players.

I’m happy to have Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition in my collection of titles. Like so many other Digital Eclipse releases, it’s a matter of the history of it all, not necessarily the modern interpretation. I appreciate the dedication and the commitment to the series, but I do wish that we would see other iterations of the Armageddon release (specifically the N64 port). Still, it’s the best console version now on modern consoles, and the history, the interviews and the spectacle of the game itself makes this a worthy addition to all collector’s libraries. Though I do recommend a physical edition, because having it on the shelves is half the fun.

Graphics: 7.5 The sprites and level designs of Armageddon haven’t aged particularly well, but it also isn’t a level of blurriness that makes it unviewable. The historic pieces and video interviews are crystal clear, and the Gameboy edition is shockingly crisp. Definitely not an HD remake, but an excellent preservation of a classic title.	Gameplay: 7.5 Purely based on my own history of using keyboard and mouse, controller manipulation takes some getting used to. You will almost assuredly blow yourself up once when you get keys swapped. Still, it cements itself quickly into your memory and the pass-and-play controller scheme is still some of the best couch-competition setup.
Sound: 7.0 Explosions, gunfire, sheep bleats, the choral chanting from the Holy Hand Grenade are all wonderful, and the different Worms voices are iconic and stick in my head all the time. The lack of music is a testament to the game’s degree of concentration, and you can always provide your own soundtrack.	Fun Factor: 9.0 Deathmatches come and go in all shapes and sizes, but the thrill of using a baseball bat to send your friend into oblivion and then doing a sweet backflip to celebrate is why we review video games. Yes, I got punched afterwards, but it felt so good in the moment.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, XBox One Series X/S and Playstation 4.5.

Reviewed on Xbox One X.

A copy of Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition was provided by the publisher.