[edit] Coming out this week, people. Here's a nice extended look:

For the first time since Worms Armageddon, series creator Andy Davidson has returned to Team 17 to develop a new Worms game. He's also not hiding the fact that he's disappointed at the turn in quality that the series has taken over the past 10 years, and claims to be committed to fixing that problem.

The following is taken from this NeoGAF thread:

http://www.neogaf.co...ad.php?t=468430

All quotes are from Andy Davidson. The order of the posts has been changed, and two posts lightly edited. For the original posts and the posts that these replies were directed towards, read the full NeoGAF thread.

The Revolution engine really is beautiful when you see it first hand, loads of nice touches and use of 3D in neat ways. It also has a running theme which will make sense when you see more of it. It's very refreshing, and the new physics engine allows a lot more scope for things to do.

I totally understand the cynicism, and also the frustration that has built up over the years. Trust me, I've felt a lot of it myself! On the one hand it's been nice that my game is still being enjoyed by people this long after I created it. It was after all never meant to be published and just for me and my mates to avoid school work, so it was designed to never end, not get boring, to not repeat. And you have to remember new people are still discovering the game.

But on the other hand for people who discovered it at the start, what happened with the game isn't the way I would have personally handled it. Which is why I walked away in 98 after Armageddon, one of the hardest things I've ever had to do but I could see where things were going. And that wasn't what I wanted for my baby as it were.

Fast forward to 2012 and where are we now then? Well I've seen the new game, and I've been up there, and the name Revolution reflects more than just the new engine. A lot has changed at Team17 recently, not just being self-published, there's a focus back on creativity and a nice mix of old and new people there now who really care about Worms, and games in general.

Revolution is being polished to the nth degree, nice touches everywhere and a bit more twisted sense of style and humour like the original Worms. It's hard to get across how good that engine looks in a short video by the way, it really is good and very refreshing which the game needs after all this time.

There's another announcement to come which will fill in some more details, and they'll be more details about the game as time goes on as well, but the people at Team17 at the moment know the importance of this title, as well as the mistakes of the past, and this is why I'm supportive of it.

This isn't a lazy Worms game, or the same Team17, and going forward I'm happy to support that as the industry really needs independent studios that foster creativity, risk taking, and people who just love games. I love games, and so did the people I saw again and the new ones I met this week.

...I can totally understand how people can [feel like the series hasn't improved since Worms Armageddon]. I myself left after Armageddon, there was a lot of pressure on the game then for various reasons and that could get in the way of things. There was a lot with Armageddon that I wasn't able to see done actually, which was incredibly frustrating.

Revolution though is the shot in the arm the series needed, and the people involved know and understand that. It's been a lot of work for them building a new engine from scratch, but it's been well worth it. It's making the game fresh again, and adding new elements to the gameplay, while still staying true to its roots. Which is why I'm happy to be back, Team17 is very different now.

I can't say much more at the moment, but I have seen Revolution and I am supportive of it. And no one is more protective of my baby than me.

We'll soon know if this truly is the true sequel to Worms Armageddon that fans have been anticipating for over a decade now. Worms Revolution is scheduled for release at the end of September.

I hate the Worms franchise so much.

I fucking loved the first worms game. Played so many hours of that with my cousin. I think it was the first playstation game I played. It's sad to see what the series became but at the same time I don't really know what they could have done differently with it.

Worms Armageddon was a 2009 game, so its not like hes been out of the picture long. Also Worms Armageddon is with in that 10 Years hes talking about.

Also the problem with worms is that its the same formula every single game, you never need to buy it more then once.

@Dagbiker said:

Worms Armageddon was a 2009 game, so its not like hes been out of the picture long. Also Worms Armageddon is with in that 10 Years hes talking about.

Also the problem with worms is that its the same formula every single game, you never need to buy it more then once.

Worms Armageddon--so far the pinnacle of the series--was released in May of 1999.

Worms 2: Armageddon--a game as poorly designed as it is stupidly titled--was released in July of 2009.

I don't blame you for your confusion, but Andy Davidson hasn't worked on a Worms game for well over a decade.

And yet I watched that trailer Alex uploaded a couple hours ago and all I see is the past few Worms games with water that doesn't instantly kill you and the ability to make your worms look way uglier. So... great, I guess.

@iAmJohn said:

And yet I watched that trailer Alex uploaded a couple hours ago and all I see is the past few Worms games with water that doesn't instantly kill you and the ability to make your worms look way uglier. So... great, I guess.

Class-based worm options and dynamic fluids are nice new features, but this game will live or die based on how close they can bring the options and feature set to Worms Armageddon. A long while ago, I wrote a review of the last Worms game--Worms 2: Armageddon--detailing just how inferior that game is when compared to real thing. Here's a sizable excerpt:

WHAT’S STILL MISSING FROM WORMS ARMAGEDDON?

Quite a bit. There’s no option to put an indestructible boarder around the landscape, no sudden death options, no teleporting your team in at the beginning of a match (more on those two issues later), no way to lower the water level, no way to adjust the power settings on each weapon, no way to set the frequency that each weapon appears in creates, no low gravity option, worms are limited to four per team (instead of eight), and there’s no level editor. While I didn’t expect to see a full level editor included, some of this stuff is pretty important, and could have been fairly easily included.

There are also a good deal of weapons and utilities missing. While some of these were admittedly silly power weapons that won’t be missed much, others added interesting elements of strategy to the game. Oh, and while there are only a handful of landscape themes in this game, there were a bunch more in Worms Armageddon.

GENERAL DESIGN FAILURE

Sadly, even if you haven’t played the older games, Worms 2: Armageddon reeks of poor design choices. The aiming doesn’t use analog control, which means fine adjustments are a pain. The background can blend in with the foreground, making it hard to tell where the land is. The landscape generator doesn’t show you the entire level anymore, and tends to cut off the ends. And you can’t change controller layout, which means you’re still forced to use the “A” button to attack, and the “X” button to jump, despite the fact that about 99.9 percent of other games have things setup the other way around.

Another bothersome issue is there’s no way to turn off sudden death–even in custom schemes–which means that at the end of the round, any player with a large health advantage over other players will be screwed over, and see their health drop down to one point for each worm. In the real Worms Armageddon, there was a water rise only option that kept things perfectly fair.

Speaking of fair, there’s no option to take turns teleporting your worms into the landscape at the beginning of the game. Sometimes you’ll start a game right next to a cliff, or a nasty bunch of mines and oil drums, and you’ll lose a worm or two just because of poor placement. I played one fort level where I killed half of the opposing team in my first turn, due to the stupid computer putting my opponents worms right next to the water.

I also have to question why there are so many wasted buttons on the controller. Both the analog stick and the d-pad do the exact same thing, while all four shoulder and bumper buttons control the level of camera zoom. The PC version of Armageddon had you using the F1-F12 keys to quick select weapons, and it worked perfectly. I have no idea why Team 17 didn’t simply map quick select categories to the d-pad and bumpers–that’s 10 wasted buttons right there–and leave the triggers for the camera.

Yet another poor design choice is how the landscape generator forces a level on you after about 10 seconds of looking for something that you’d enjoy. Even in a private match, if you haven’t picked a landscape after a short amount of time, the next one generated is IT. You could argue that this was done to avoid an annoying host who is being way too picky, but even the guests have no option to force the host to pick something, or allow them to take their time. It’s just forced on everyone.

And why the heck is their so much LAG in this game? It’s turn-based–so it doesn’t matter as far as gameplay is concerned–but why can I play Street Fighter HD Remix (which requires very precise timing) without a moment of lag, and I can play the recently released Rocket Riot (which has a ton of things happening on the screen at once) without much lag, but in Worms 2: Armageddon, there’s often about five full seconds of lag during each turn? A player will take their turn, comment about something that just happened, and it won’t happen on anyone else’s screen for about five seconds. I have to say, that seems a bit ridiculous.

But perhaps worst of all are the changes Team 17 has made to online play. There’s now no way to tell which games are currently being hosted, which means you have to try selecting each game type before you find one that’s actually being hosted, or host it yourself and hope someone tries playing that exact game type at that exact time. The only way around this is to use the “quick play” option, and that means you could end up playing anything. Even Worms XBLA allowed you to see a list of public matches, so why the step backwards?

Also, unlike the first Worms XBLA, the game is designed in a way where you will never be able to play an xbox live game using a custom scheme, and you will never be able to play anyone else’s custom scheme, unless you invite someone to your game, or you accept an invite to their game. I hope you enjoy the weapons and settings you get in the couple of standard schemes, because you’re pretty much stuck with them. So much for customization.

So yeah, Worms 2: Armageddon is a joke for Worms Armageddon fans, who have been waiting for over a dozen years just to play a proper game of worms over Xbox Live or PSN. Perhaps they'll get it right this time, but I remain highly skeptical.

I just added a rather extensive preview video to the original post. Check it out.