Worms Reloaded for PC reviewed by Adam Hall. Game supplied for review by Team 17

You'd think for the first 2D Worms game on PC since Worms: World Party in 2001, Team 17 would want to bring it back with a bang. Perhaps with an attachment apologising for the nine-year absence. And all the 3D Worms games. Fifteen long years have passed since the release of the first Worms, and looking back reveals that very little has changed. Sure, it looks better and there's a broader variety of weapons, but surely we need something more...

And yet tradition prevails, posing four-strong teams of worms against each other, imprisoned on varying and vibrant landscapes and commanded to kill with ludicrous weaponry until only one remains. It's old, it's simple, but it works - and let's count our lucky stars it's not in 3D.

With this Steam-only PC release comes a handful of tweaks and additions from Worms 2: Armageddon (W2:A) on Xbox Live Arcade, its informal predecessor, including brilliant high-definition visuals (scalable to run on everything but your microwave), re-mastered sound, and most notably, Warzone and Body Count single-player modes and the return of the level editor. There's also a whole bunch of hats. And an optional blur effect. Seriously.

It's satisfactory considering the game was already good before the additions, but it might pose a problem even at the relatively low price-point of £17.99 considering the main campaign is pretty much identical to that of its older brother, right down to terrain and enemy worm names. It is called 'Reloaded', though, not 'Reinvented'.

So, whereas Warzone simply adds an extra 30 missions to the campaign's 35, albeit tailored to the more advanced player, Body Count creates an entirely different war, taking the ubiquitous horde-style mode and making it turn-based. It is without a doubt the most unexpected addition to the series, putting you in control of a single worm against infinitely-spawning and increasingly difficult enemies for as long as you can survive, but it also the most refreshing. The fact that you're only the lonely means your strategy gland has to work in overdrive to manage offence and defence; when to attack, how to attack and when to just blast a cave in a cliff with the blowtorch. With one worm you can rarely afford to make mistakes, and it can be ridiculously hard – that new A.I. sure is talented – but it's incredibly rewarding, more so if you can beat a rival on the leaderboard.

Still, what's most interesting about Reloaded is that, despite the new content not offering any great departure from the old, it's really the transition back to the PC that makes it worthy of attention for any fan of the series. While it doesn't quite reach the level of customisation that was afforded to Worms: Armageddon back in 1999 with The Fiddler, there's still a great number of options to allow users to shape their game - including weapon availability, worm health, fall damage, etc. – and even quite literally now that the highly sought-after level editor makes a return.

In fact it's quite tempting to recommend Reloaded on virtue of the level editor alone because it's not only quick and intuitive, allowing users to create playable levels in seconds and intricate ones with ease, it adds depth to the very core of Worms, whereby the layout of the terrain plays into the strategies and behaviour of the players just as much as proximity. The freedom to create wild and wacky levels is a breeding ground for diverse gameplay, and the ability to play and share them with friends all around the world is almost guaranteed to stimulate the community far beyond the point at which W2:A's random landscape generator stopped being all that random.

My initial boot-up of the review copy was intended to last only 10 or 15 minutes, but an hour and a half later I was still editing my level, my worm appearance and my game mode; lost once again to the charm of squeaky-voiced combat. Owners of W2:A will instantly recognise the weapon roster, bar a few new additions such as Steal, Invisibility and Worship - the latter adding two points of health per turn to the team who deployed it; the former being pretty obvious – but what really smooths out Reloaded's combat is the fully-customisable controls. Navigation of the terrain and quickly deploying aerial attacks is much faster with a mouse, as is aiming, jumping and setting fuse times with the keyboard, especially if you rebind the controls to suit your needs. You can change whatever you need to better the experience.

And that's really Reloaded's biggest success: customisation. Again, it still pales in comparison to the manipulation one could achieve with The Fiddler, but it's a solid step in the right direction towards a Worms game with all that gubbins built in.

I can't help but feel that Team 17 can't keep selling the same formula with minimal updates for much longer, particularly on the PC where an openly mod-able release would likely produce some of the series' best days since Armageddon. But as it stands it's still a competent and hugely enjoyable turn-based strategy game, and though it lacks any revolutionary differences from Worms 2: Armageddon on XBLA, the visuals, level editor and controls leave me no hesitation in deeming it the superior version.