Team17’s Worms franchise has been going strong for well over 20 years at this stage. As such, perhaps it was overdue for a bit of a change-up. The Worms games have previously been strategic turn-based affairs, featuring teams of worms chipping away at each other with various crazy weaponry. This latest instalment, Worms Rumble, jettisons that tactical element in favour of a 32-player, 2D multiplayer-focused arena shooter with a distinct Battle Royale flavour.

Many of the changes seemed outright sacrilegious to a series fan like myself at first. However, after spending a good amount of time with Worms Rumble and its three game modes, it has won me over for the most part. It is certainly a different kind of experience to the main series entries, but so long as you view Worms Rumble as its own distinct entity, there is a lot to like here.

Worms Rumble has a ridiculously fast pace, with players encouraged to roll around on the move at all times and shoot the first thing vaguely worm-shaped that they come across. The levels are vast, yet compact enough to make avoiding confrontations difficult. The player starts with a basic weapon such as the Hand Cannon, but weapons, grenades and utility items are scattered liberally across the map, either in crates or dropped by dead worms. By using the baseball bat to break down air vents, players can also hide in ducts and take potshots at nearby opponents. Returning items such as the Rope and Jet Pack also provide many fun mobility options for getting around. New weapons, like the Sentry Launcher and Rocket Shield, let you set up and protect against ambushes.

The lightning-fast rocket-tag gameplay is the game’s biggest asset, providing quick bursts of excitement between inevitable and frequent respawns. Unfortunately, that pacing works against one of the biggest appeals of the Worms games for me, which is the massive arsenal of weapons. Most of the series mainstays return here, from the humble Assault Rifle and Shotgun, to the more ridiculous, like the Sheep Launcher and Banana Bomb. For me, one of the best aspects of the turn-based Worms games was setting up the right scenario to deploy difficult-to-use but highly effective weapons like the Sheep or the Holy Hand Grenade.

In Worms Rumble, there was rarely any time to use one of the weirder, more complicated weapons; I would always get shot trying to aim my Sheep or have worms scurry out of the way of my Banana Bomb. When you can only carry two guns at once, there was not much room for experimentation. It led to games where I would rely exclusively on one or two weapons for convenience sake, particularly the Assault Rifle and Shotgun. It’s an effective strategy, sure, but I rarely felt there was a good time to make use of many of Worms Rumble’s arsenal when the boring default weapons were more useful.

After a brief tutorial, players can access the three game modes that Worms Rumble offers: Deathmatch, Last Squad Standing, and Last Worm Standing. I spent most of my time with Deathmatch. It was the only one I found myself consistently OK at, and also seemed to be the most populated with other players.

Deathmatch is perhaps most akin to your average multiplayer shooter, where you respawn shortly after getting killed, and the player with the best kill/death ratio at the end is crowned the winner. It felt like the mode best suited to the pace of Worms Rumble, with the brief respawn time getting you back in the game fast.

By performing well, you can acquire currency and experience to put towards cosmetic items for your worm. There were no microtransactions or loot box mechanics I could see, which was a pleasant surprise. I was disappointed that a lot of voice options and other cosmetics from past games are not currently available in Worms Rumble. For instance, whatever happened to the ability to choose your worm’s crazy gravestone? Still, it was fun to play around with what cosmetic options we get, and hopefully, more are on their way.

It’s also worth noting that the game is fully cross-play compatible at launch with PC, PS4 and PS5. In fact, at one point my Last Squad Standing squad contained one player from each platform and it just worked seamlessly. A cool feature that will make teaming up with your friends much easier.