Worms Armageddon Anniversary Edition Nintendo Switch Review

[Hurt Me Plenty]

Hey, I don't know where I should post this review so I'm posting it there. So as a big Worms fan I purchased Worms Armageddon Anniversary Edition on Nintendo Switch at day 1 release. The game looks and plays exactly like the Worms Armageddon which is good for me. I haven't seen any FPS issue during my 1 hour playtime VS bots which is also good but what I have seen there is a lot of things that has been removed.

Removed from customization:
-you got only 6 graveyards,
-there are only country flags now,
-there are some special anthems and voices but it I'm pretty sure some are missing there.

Removed from gameplay:
-seems like they removed some movements like moving backward while looking forward (IM NOT SURE THERE, I ALWAYS USED KEYBOARD TO PERFORM IT SO MAYBE IM DOING SOMETHING WRONG).

Multiplayer thoughts:
So after purchasing the game I purchased the online Nintendo pass so I could play multiplayer and then... then I realized that multiplayer doesn't even works. It gives you error when you try to browse or host a game. I tried online mode on different game (Diablo 2 Remaster) just to be sure if maybe there is something wrong with my internet connection but everything was ok. So I purchased the game to play the online multiplayer on a handheld console meanwhile it doesn't even work... I hope they will fix this however I remember Worms World Party PC remaster also had problems with online mode later but not at day 1... Come on.

TLDR (Nintendo Switch version):
Same fluent gameplay without FPS drops but the game is missing some movement features and customization features, online multiplayer doesn't seems to work... Atleast for now. Ah, and take in mind Nintendo Switch usually doesn't have a chat on their console so I'm pretty sure even if multiplayer will get back to work - there will be no option to chat with other people. Overall negative thoughts mostly because of not working multiplayer as I don't care that much about the customization.

[Obn3g0n]

Cool, thanks for being the first review on the internet! Can you give more info about customization:

-Can you have 1 second turns? Infinite time turns where the timer counts up? Can you fine-tune by the second or is it just presets?
-Does map editor allow you to load custom .PNG maps downloaded from the internet? If so are they limited to standard size (1920x696) or can you play bigger maps (for example https://wmdb.org/18160)
-How many total worms maximum can there be at once? (PC version allows 6 teams x 8 worms = 48). How many maximum objects (mines, oil drums, etc)?
-Can you load / save / share scheme files?
-Are there replay files?

Just trying to determine how much of the updates have been brought into this release.

[Hurt Me Plenty]

Originally posted by Obn3g0n:

Cool, thanks for being the first review on the internet! Can you give more info about customization:

-Can you have 1 second turns? Infinite time turns where the timer counts up?
-Does map editor allow you to load custom .PNG maps downloaded from the internet? If so are they limited to standard size (1920x696) or can you play bigger maps (for example https://wmdb.org/18160)
-How many total worms maximum can there be at once? (PC version allows 6 teams x 8 worms = 48). How many maximum objects (mines, oil drums, etc)?
-Can you load / save / share scheme files?
-Are there replay files?

Just trying to determine how much of the updates have been brought into this release.

TURNS:
It seems like I have 0 second turn and it instantly does end my turn. Maximum turn time is 127 seconds, I don't see the option to make it infinite.

MAP EDITOR:
I don't see any option to upload or download or even insert any new graphics files. There is an option to "generate a level based on the text entered" - I don't know if it's a map seed or something.

WORMS AMOUNT:
It seems like there can be 8 worms each team and 6 teams total - I tried it on a two islands map with all weapons scheme to release maximum fireworks to check the FPS drops again - the game plays fluently, no FPS drop at all.

REPLAYS:
I don't see any option to save or watch the replays.

SCHEMES:
You can make your own schemes and save it.

VISIBILITY:
Also one more annoying thing that could be easily patched:
I tried every button (some of them aren't mapped to anything for example the "-" button) and it seems like its not possible to hide the worms names just to see their HP - which is very annoying as the name bar covers a bit of the screen.

[Obn3g0n]

Oof. Big miss on lack of downloadable maps. Don't they know there are many thousands of maps out there? Might be a publishing agreement with the console makers that doesn't allow potentially offensive user content to be shared. I assume you can at least save and share maps made in the in-game editor? That would at least make Rope Race feasible. Hopefully schemes can be shared too.

Turn time is good. Glad they didn't go for hard presets or else games like Hysteria wouldn't have been possible.

Would have liked to see WormPot (from WWP) added, considering they didn't port over the advanced scheme options (boggysentme) like "shot doesn't end turn" and "damage doesn't end turn".

Overall not terrible - at least it's a faithful port with reasonable customization of options. I'm sure the online play will be fixed.

I do think it's pretty classless of Team17 not to mention Deadcode and Cybershadow in the "War Stories" section (at least not in what I could read in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO82DPXA7PE ). WA would have died like 10+ years ago without them.

Thanks again for the review and for the additional info.

[Hurt Me Plenty]

Multiplayer seems to be working now. Played one pretty long 1vs1 game recently with max worms.

[infernogott]

How are the controls? How do you select weapons? Do you control a cursor like on PC?

[Hurt Me Plenty]

If you use the left stick you can "hop" between weapons. It's like 1 stick move = 1 "hop", I don't know how to describe that.

However when you use the right stick you can move it freely like you are playing with a mouse.

[KenjiN4]

I guess we aren’t really missing much with the AE being console only then, right? It’s a shame because the presentation there looks a bit touched up, some UI changes for the menus on PC would be quite welcome imo

[Hurt Me Plenty]

Well if I would be honest Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition is okay but it's clearly visible it's been made for the consoles only. I would say it's more like a port to the consoles rather than remaster. It's almost all the same but now it works great for consoles. If they would make it on steam... Honestly, I wouldn't see any differences maybe except the main menu icons placement and lacks of some content.

[Schorsch Wadschinken]

Originally posted by Hurt Me Plenty:

-seems like they removed some movements like moving backward while looking forward (IM NOT SURE THERE, I ALWAYS USED KEYBOARD TO PERFORM IT SO MAYBE IM DOING SOMETHING WRONG).

Not really "removed" insofar as this version seems to be based on an old PC build that didn't have this feature yet. But also gamepads just don't have enough buttons for something like this unless you use button chords, and then you get into the territory where most developers are under the impression console users are too stupid for advanced button mapping or advanced options anything

No downloadable/custom graphics maps was completely expected by me for a console release. Literally every single console release of any Worms game has lacked this feature.

I'm not sure why you said there were special speechbanks, they're the same as in the PC version (the Smooth Operator one lost its "censored" status and reverted back to Smooth Babe, but stuff like Angry Scots is still absent)

I'm playing it myself right with the help of certain... software... the immediate presentation is pretty cool I guess with the animated title screen, though there's no heartbeat intro.

I find it interesting that the weapons menu is not really altered. You can use the d'pad to control it but you're also allowed to use the right analog stick as a "mouse" cursor.

The camera movement is not as smooth as I'd expect. I don't know if that's due to the """software""" I'm using or if it's because the game used to be hard-coded to run at 50 Hz (while consoles output at 60 Hz), only mitigated by interpolation in later PC updates

I can't find any option to change resolution. I find it actually a little too zoomed out on a handheld (Steam Deck in my case)

There is also no button to toggle background graphics or worm names. Very unfortunate

(Full button layout here[i.imgur.com])

It's very interesting that the main menu actually uses the smooth, interpolated modern water graphics from the PC version, but in-game it uses the old water.

The ambient soundtracks seem to be using the lower-quality PC ones (due to limited space on CDs back then). They certainly could have used the full quality ones instead. Literally replace the .wav files, like come on.

The "Angry Scots" version of the main theme is missing. After you win a match it's just complete silence. Which is weird because the track is available in the "music player" from the main main menu

No changes were made to the Gameboy Color version of the game so weapon damage calculation is still completely broken which makes it not fun to play



For the record, I have no reason to play this console version over the PC version, it's just interesting to check out the differences and the design choices they made. Also, for the interviews which I would still prefer to be able to just buy separately. They could literally put those on Steam and GOG

[```skunk3```]

All of these points are exactly why I think the AE is a joke.

Also, I just couldn't imagine trying to play W:A on a Switch (I hate the ergonomics of it), especially with crappy resolution. If I felt like playing Worms on a console, there's much better options, like WMD or even Battlegrounds / Clan Wars.

[Schorsch Wadschinken]

I'd shill the Steam Deck here since it can play most games in the series out of the box, and with some tinkering every single game in the series. Plus if you are a bit more hardcore you can take advantage of the additional button mappings and hotkeys of the PC versions. I have all weapon selection hotkeys bound to the grip buttons, for example.

[Flpstrike]

I wish they could bring some of those features to the PC:
Main Menu
Correct HUD scale
Controller Support

[Schorsch Wadschinken]

Sorry, what is correct HUD scale? Also Steam Input is pretty good and basically functions like controller support

[MetalGearOpz87]

Originally posted by Hurt Me Plenty:

Well if I would be honest Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition is okay but it's clearly visible it's been made for the consoles only. I would say it's more like a port to the consoles rather than remaster. It's almost all the same but now it works great for consoles. If they would make it on steam... Honestly, I wouldn't see any differences maybe except the main menu icons placement and lacks of some content.

Seems like it's better than the original for PS1.

[Callinater]

Personally, I noticed that the game doesn't run anywhere near as smoothly as the PC version. Though, I think that might actually be due to this release not carrying over features from 3.8, since once of which was the introduction of the tweening technique which allowed for higher framerates beyond the initial cap of 48FPS imposed by the engine limitations. It's unfortunate, but if I'm not mistaken, the team maintaining Armageddon to this day works independently from T17, so there may be some problems with 'borrowing' their work for this rerelease. I hope that can be sorted though.