Nobody has done more for the reputation of the humble worm than Team 17. Over the past decade, the Yorkshiremen behind the world's most anarchical turn-based strategy game have bolstered the unassuming annelid's credentials to such an extent that gamers arguably get more of a rise out of them than the average invertebrophile - and that's an achievement not to be squashed idly underfoot.Unfortunately, in the case of Worms Forts: Under Siege, the series' undoubted pedigree merely serves to underline just how far the worm has turned away from the origins of its simple brilliance. Besieged by newfound complexity, Forts is more sloth than worm, taking far too long to get going and lacking the razor sharp wit and pace as well as the left-right-click-fire simplicity of its progenitor once it does. Siege hereClassic Worms involved two opposing teams chucking explosive sheep, Holy Hand Grenades and other comedy projectiles at one another, and swinging around like Tarzan with the legendary ninja rope across tight, beautifully drawn and crucially destructible environments. Worms 3D just gave it another dimension; many would say to its detriment.
Forts picks up from there, and introduces base-building ideas; now you start with a central fort and build outwards every turn, opening up advanced weaponry and other options as you take over the 'victory locations' dotted around the map, in addition to trying to pulverise your adversary with bishop-launching cannons and explosive fridge-freezers full of equally explosive frozen ferrets.But it's lost far more than it's gained. Presumably in order for the base-building to work, Forts has been stripped of the series' trademark destructible landscapes, so that only the worms and buildings can be shot to pieces. Which immediately sacrifices the much-loved possibility of blowing the ground out from under each other, or seeing a wayward rocket carve a makeshift stairway out of a cliff, which conveys a tumbling barrel of napalm onto the unlucky troopers below.This alone feels like a grave mistake, but it's far from Forts' worst crime. It's rife with other issues; unlocking new weapons which can only be fired from atop certain buildings is a clever idea, but building bases is monotonous, and making good use of the weapons at your disposal is so difficult to do. Things like the springy double-jump may help you cover significant distances, but your journeys these days are generally only round trips from the top of a decent building to a weapons crate and back.
The game actually seems to be designed to discourage you from moving around the map. NaptimeBy far the most frustrating thing about Forts though is the pace.
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Or the total lack thereof. It used to be that we'd sit there hammering the mouse button to try and speed things up because we eagerly wanted to get on with smashing the bejesus out of each other. Here we just hammer it to help pass the time. The addition of base-building means that you can win either by destroying your enemy's stronghold or by killing all his worms, but either approach takes hours - and that's not too much of an exaggeration.