In fact, there are almost too many items to keep track of at the start, especially if you're a newcomer. You can play through the dozens of training games for many of WMD's weapons and traversal items, but some of those are a bit on the boring side. Fortunately, there's more reason to return to those missions than just sharpening combat skills as high scores are tracked and XP can be earned toward customization options. If anything, the amount of training games is so vast that it's a little disappointing that a handful of items are left off because they seem like they might’ve been among the most entertaining. Some of WMD's weirder items like the Dodgy Cell Phone Battery, the Concrete Donkey, the Old Lady, and the Poke are under-explained, meaning fodder - I mean inexperienced players - have to experiment in the middle of a battle and potentially waste a move when learning about the uses for certain weapons.
WMD's biggest new gambit are powerful but risky vehicles like tanks and helicopters.
All of those items are mostly standard Worms equipment that build on the many prior Worms games (inasmuch as exploding batteries and donkeys as weapons are standard) but Worms WMD's biggest new gambit comes in the form of powerful but risky vehicles like tanks, mechanized suits, and helicopters. Most of those add some good high-powered destructive capability to your team; the tank and its multi-shot cannon is a godsend, and if you can properly pilot the slippery choppers you can deal some damage from above with its down-facing machine gun. The mech suits' melee attacks, however, are usually more trouble than they're worth due to the many explosives they can accidentally trigger. Far more dependable are the stationary turrets you can build or find throughout the many stages - sacrificing mobility for firepower can really pay off if you know when to use it.“
Crafting adds a new quirk to combat - you can do it while enemies move.
Another usually welcome WMD innovation is that you can assemble new weapons and items from elements collected on the battlefield. It adds a new quirk to combat since you can start crafting while enemies make their moves, and it can make multiplayer matches even more unpredictable since enemies only know that you've made something but aren't told exactly what. The crafting system could be a bit more user friendly by pointing out which items are necessary to craft what items on certain stages (for example, whether a jetpack is needed on a map when a grappling hook can be made instead), and since elements are collected in bulk some of the recipes are a bit too convoluted. But has crafting become more and more enjoyable the longer I play WMD.“
Something I'm still struggling with, though, is WMD's use of buildings. I like the idea of taking shelter from the many explosives and air strikes (as well as the risk-reward balance between discovering collectibles or active mines inside), and that it’s not a complete safe haven as there are items that can kill campers like a drilling missile, a blowtorch that can blast through walls. Where I find issue with WMD's buildings is that so many of the maps fail to make clear which structures can actually be entered and which are just ornate environmental elements. Even when I can tell a giant castle or building can be entered, the entrance points are often difficult to discern. For the larger structures, I've often wasted an entire turn hopping and flipping about trying to find a way into the building.But between the challenge of the missions and their side objectives, there's plenty of reason to continue the fight before even turning to the dependably entertaining multiplayer. Taking on a complete stranger in a 20-minute online war as you whittle each other's ranks down is far more exciting than it has any right to be, but Worms' charms are amplified when playing locally. With the considerable cost of extra controllers, it’s great that the turn-based style of WMD's two-player combat can be pulled off by passing one controller back and forth. The only time a multiplayer match drags is during stalemates where the environment is so thoroughly destroyed and sapped of all resources in such a way that the combatants couldn't reach each other, but those have been rare.
Just about everything you do in Worms WMD earns XP that unlocks new voice packs, hats, and even tombstones left behind by the worms that fall in battle. You can also rename teams and individual soldier names (I named my squadmates after actors from The Expendables) which invites you to become more attached to them and amplifies the tension when they’re in danger. However, as someone who’s spent so many years with the extra customization on PC with rejiggering sound files, it's a shame WMD doesn't allow us to record our own taunts and victory jingles.