2 people found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 17.7 hrs on record (17.7 hrs at review time)
Posted: Aug 11, 2016 @ 2:45pm
Updated: Aug 11, 2016 @ 2:45pm

This is problematic. I recommend the game if you're interested in the worms like gameplay, with rudimentary tech trees and if you'll be playing it with your friends.

Let us start with the good stuff. Hurling massive objects at your stupid neighbouring planets is just as fun as it sounds, guesstimating the trajectories and getting multiple hits is highly satisfying. Constructing strategies around weapon types is also satisfying and bantering with your friends about their intel levels (or lack thereof) is fantastic fun. The superweapons are very powerful and incredibly fun

Another good thing is the overall "good feel" of the game. I can't quite put my finger on it but it is just fun to play. The online play is also generally good (although sometimes it does get buggy, more on that later).

Now the bad. While there is nothing that screams "DON'T BUY" about this game there are a few things that are not great.

The bugs I mentioned earlier, there are some annoying ones. Like when you aim missiles at your enemy, you have to get a trajectory that gets them close to the planet and than you click on the planet to zoom in and select a specific target, however if you're zoomed out to far it won't let you click so you have to scroll in and than click. Not bad with one missile. Quite frustrating when you're trying to aim 8 of them within the turn time limit. Sometimes buildings don't quite build the way you wanted them (connection was there when you placed it but than a turn later the game says it's too far).
Bigger bugs are the game breaking ones, sometimes for unknown reason a player in the multiplayer game will be stuck in the "tactical" phase and will have to abandon the game to let other players keep playing. There is also no drop-in, if your game crashes (never happened to me but did happen to others) at the end of a 2 hour match you're ♥♥♥♥ out of luck. Sometimes the framerate in the tactical phase will get incredibly bad (due to the number of simulated projectiles) and that might cause some players to crash, not to mention the calculation issues that occur when that happens.

Another problem is general balance.

The general way weapons are balanced is via intel. Railgun are "unguided" and you just get to aim them at a planet and hope you hit something important. You might kill a city by pure luck, or all your shots might end up in the ocean. Railguns really work by the volume of fire strategy. If you fire a lot of them at an opponent some of them SHOULD hit something important, that also will overload defences. The main thing is you don't really need intel for them.

Missiles and lasers need intelligence on the enemy to be effective. Missiles do less damage and have smaller aoe than railguns but you can aim where they'll land, lasers have an even smaller aoe but there is no way you'll miss it like you can everything else. So intel and counter-intel is key to beating these weapons. Thing is, all you really need to do to is get good intelligence on your opponent once and than you'll have at least a vague idea where the important stuff is (like cities, the goal of the game). If you're not sure, you can just aim vaguely in their areas. If you hit them the game will confirm that and you'll know where to fire.

Railguns are fun, but missiles and lasers are simply more effective in the long run. Same goes for the two superweapons, the mass driver (pushing a big asteroid into your enemies) and the orbital laser. The asteroid is DEVASTATING. But you need to hit. The laser is slightly less devastating, but it can't miss. if your opponent has cities on the day side and you know where they are. Your enemy is ♥♥♥♥♥♥. This would be better if the orbital laser only had a chance of going through defences, instead of ignoring them completely.

Then there is the fact that there really are only 3 weapons. I'd like it if there were some other types of weapons, or perhaps more superweapons. Being able to kamikaze your dying planet using a mass driver (as an act of vengeance) would be great. Interplanetary gauss guns acting as physical lasers would also be nice. More variety would do great things for this game.


That was long winded. All in all, while my "bad stuff" section is longer than the "good stuff" section, it is only so because I actually really like the game. And I want it to be even better. If the idea of the game seems appealing to you, and you've always liked worms. Than you're probably going to enjoy it as much as I have, despite the inherent problems it has.
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