Worms 3D

Worms 3D brings Team17's long-running turn-based artillery series to PlayStation 2 in full three-dimensional form. The central idea remains wonderfully direct: guide a small team of heavily armed worms around a battlefield, make the most of a limited turn, and be the last team standing. Matches combine deliberate positioning, calculated weapon use, and the unpredictable chain reactions that have always defined Worms. With bright, toy-like islands replacing the earlier side-on landscapes, this 2003 entry reimagines the familiar contest from a new angle while preserving its comic rivalry and tactical pace.

Each turn gives one worm a brief opportunity to move, jump, aim, select equipment, and cause as much trouble as possible before time expires. Health is limited, the sea surrounding many arenas is dangerous, and a badly judged explosion can be as harmful to the firing team as to its target. Players judge distance, elevation, wind and the shape of the terrain when lining up attacks, then live with the result. A rocket fired across an island, an air strike called onto an exposed rival, or a well-timed shove toward the water can transform the state of a match in seconds.

The arsenal mixes conventional tools with the deliberately absurd inventions that give the series its personality. Bazookas, grenades, shotguns and dynamite sit beside the Holy Hand Grenade, Banana Bomb and airborne Super Sheep. Utilities can help a worm reach a difficult ledge or escape a dangerous position, while destructive equipment can open paths and change the ground beneath every team. Weapon availability is governed by the match setup, so a round built around explosive chaos plays differently from one that rewards patient movement and precise shots.

Moving Worms into 3D changes the practical questions behind every turn. Instead of thinking only in a side view, players need to navigate slopes, structures and winding terrain while accounting for depth as well as height. The camera makes it possible to inspect an arena from different perspectives before committing to a shot, and the 3D landscapes add new sightlines and hiding places. The adjustment is not merely visual: choosing a route, finding a clear firing angle, and deciding whether a target can be knocked into the water become part of the moment-to-moment strategy.

Worms 3D supports local multiplayer for up to four competing teams, making it a natural party game on PlayStation 2. Teams can be customized with names, voice banks and visual details, allowing a session to feel more personal even before the first weapon is selected. Quick Match provides a fast route to a custom skirmish, with rules and conditions that can be adjusted to suit the group. The turn-based structure encourages spectatorship as well as play, since every outrageous misfire, lucky bounce and last-second escape becomes part of the shared joke.

Solo players can work through a campaign of 35 missions designed around specific objectives rather than simple elimination. Some tasks ask for enemy worms to be defeated, while others focus on reaching crates, triggering mines or using particular weapons effectively. Performance medals provide an incentive to revisit missions, and success can unlock extras such as additional maps, challenge content, weapon information and voice banks. Challenge missions further test controlled use of individual tools, rewarding efficient collection of targets within a growing time limit.

Developed by Team17 and published by Sega for this PlayStation 2 release, Worms 3D is a notable chapter in a series best known for its hand-drawn 2D battles. Its shift to polygonal arenas keeps the series' blend of accessible controls, black-comedy weapons and deceptively careful tactics intact, even as it asks players to adapt to a new spatial perspective. Whether approached as a sequence of missions or as a couch multiplayer contest, it is built around the same enduring Worms pleasure: planning the perfect move, watching it go spectacularly wrong, and immediately preparing the next worm's retaliation.