Worms Crazy Golf HD brings back innovation to the series
Are you one of those whose tactics when playing Worms is somewhere along the lines of “pick the thing that explodes the most, throw it in a random direction, hope to kill more of the enemy than of allies”? Well, Team17 (the people behind Worms) made a came to punish people like you. It’s called Worms Crazy Golf HD. If you felt an immense pleasure in timing the angle, power and timer of a grenade just enough to blow that pesky enemy Worm to pieces however, this game is for you. Read on to find out why.
Worms Crazy Golf HD is a weird game. If you start with basic Worms (2D), add a golf game, a little bit of Angry Birds, and a couple of ounces of The Incredible Machine, then you’re almost there. You have your familiar Worms 2D landscapes, but instead of enemies and an arsenal of weapons you have a hole to hit and an arsenal of clubs to do it. Scattered across the landscape are gardeners who blow up and create bunkers if you hit them (leaving gravestones, of course), and crates, coins, sheep etc to give you bonuses. You pick between various gold clubs and try to get the ball into the hole within the allowed number of hits. You aim and power your hits like with weapons in normal Worms, but there are a couple of dead zones that makes you miss if you release the power buildup in them (holding it in until the end is one of them).
As you progress the levels become more and more convoluted and various additional game mechanics pop up. Cannons to shoot your ball, mines, magnets, teleports, breakable barriers etc. If you thought hitting a normal golf hole was hard, try doing it with a repelling magnet between you and the hole (golf balls are apparently magnetic, btw). There are bonus rounds where your goal is to kill some poor sheep as quickly as possible by either hitting them with the ball directly, hitting mines next to them, shoot them with the cannons etc. And that’s just me haven gotten to level 9 in the first campaign (there are 4×18 holes/levels total in the single player).
Hitting the ball is a lot like throwing grenades in normal Worms, and things like magnets add to that. You often don’t have very many hits to get the ball into the hole before your chance to go on to the next hole is forfeited, so tactics and accuracy quickly become key. Apparently it’s possible to get a hole in one on every course, but don’t ask me how.
The game brings a new twist to the Worms franchise which despite living on with games on mobile platforms are getting long in the tooth. Different accents, names etc and the entire crazy arsenal of contraptions in the game makes it true to the Worms franchise while going new ways to bring Worms fans something new. Perhaps most important of all, if you finish this game and then go to play a round of normal Worms with some friends, they’ll never know what hit them as grenade after grenade tracks them down even the most obscure hiding places.
The iPad app is $2.99 in the App Store right now. That price might be because of Black Friday, I’m not sure, but if not it’s a great price. No Android version yet though.
