We adore innovation at Pocket Gamer; we revel in clever ideas and new ways of playing games and we even award all of our games an innovation score. However, even we believe that there are times when you have to hold to the adage if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Take the wheel for instance. Okay, so it’s evolved a little since the first rounded stone rolled off the production lines, but the fundamentals of a rounded object attached to some sort of axle has endured relatively well over the years without anyone feeling the need to suggest that ‘maybe a flattened edge would be worth a go’.
Though perhaps less influential in the progress of mankind, in the realm of video games Worms has proven to have similarly sound fundamentals. The essential experience of controlling miniature pink characters, who take it in turns to fire increasingly ludicrous high-calibre weaponry at each other until there’s only one left standing, has endured virtually unchanged for many years. So why on earth would you muck around with it and risk breaking the whole thing?
That’s exactly the question you’ll find yourself asking after the first few minutes of playing Worms Forts 3D. Whilst at first sight it's undeniably appealing (the 2D worms are fantastically animated, the 3D levels and backgrounds superb), and there’s immediate familiarity in the form of two teams of pink wriggly fellas firing outrageous weaponry (including The Moose, Super Hippo and Little old lady guns) at each other, it soon becomes clear that the ability to construct buildings has changed the game dynamic dramatically.You see, the presence of these buildings makes it considerably more difficult to hit the opposing worms, something which is hardly helped by a nicely animated, but tricky to judge, firing system. Admittedly, you do get to destroy the structures (which is both satisfying and strategically important), but disappointingly the worms standing next to them are not adversely affected, nor, it seems, is the 3D landscape, which merely blackens under fire, replacing the huge craters of the original version. Now, intensify these frustrations with a bizarrely limited supply of decent weaponry in the first few levels and the fact that games tend to descend into rather tiresome wars of attrition between ill-judged bazooka and grenade attacks, it’s understandable that many will dismiss Worms Forts 3D after just a few minutes' play.
