The day it was released, I bought Worms (iTunes link) for my iPhone. I ran into some problems and quickly regretted the purchase. With a little time, I’m now glad I have the game. It’s what I’ve been using for the last few weeks to kill short bits of time.
When I first played the game, I ran into a few problem. Some were design based (like not being able to find help for the weapons), but the biggest problem was the frame rate. While the game was supposed to run well (and have even more graphical effects on the 3GS, which I don’t have) on my device it had a low frame rate and was slow to recognize input. I soon wrote a good sized email to the developers, Team 17, about how disappointed I was and how they should have tested more, etc.
Actually, it was an iPhone problem. After enough time (especially with demanding games, in this case Peggle), memory performance on the iPhone drops (fragmentation issues, I suspect). When I thought of this the next morning (since I’d seen this before with Trism feeling slow after days of constant playing), I restarted my iPhone and everything was perfect. I promptly wrote back to Team 17 (who had written me a nice and well though out reply in the mean time) and informed them my problem was fixed, and how I fixed it, thinking that may be useful to others.
So now I’ve been playing for a few weeks and the game is really very good. The little Worms, on their higher difficulties, are much better than I am and provide a great challenge. I’ve completed 40 of the 50 levels, but that’s taken me a ton of time. Aiming, which I was skeptical of at first, works very well with a short bit of use. The game almost never slows down on my 3G (basically only when 4-5 worms are being thrown around by an explosion) and when the levels are first being loaded. Once your in game, it all works quite well.
The wacky little worms, their weapons, and sound effects are all there. This is the game you remember. The little worms are very detailed, but you can’t see just how well unless you zoom in quite a bit. If you do zoom in that far, you can’t see much of the screen so you can’t really play. If the iPhone had a higher resolution, the game would look amazing. The biggest problem I’ve found with the game is that when shooting a rocket (or other thing) across the map, the camera doesn’t always go far enough so some times you can’t see where it lands without manual positioning.
Shortly after release, the first patch to the game was released. It made some things (like how to find weapons help) more obvious, and included a warning for when memory pressure was too high that resetting your device would help performance. It’s a very fun game. If you liked worms, or turn based annelid combat appeals to you, you should buy the game. Just be aware that the only multi-player is “hand the iPhone to the other guy” style.
