I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with Earthworm Jim. The exploits of a simple earthworm who happens upon a Super Space Suit and becomes an addle-brained intergalactic hero have always had too much pull for me to resist. After several years out of the spotlight, Earthworm Jim has returned on Xbox Live and he’s better than ever before.

The first major addition that is noticeable immediately upon selecting ‘New Game’ from the title menu is several new difficulty levels. Funnily enough, the developers of the game considered all three of these difficulty levels to be beneath the difficulty of the first game. As such, they saw fit to include a setting, dubbed original, which emulates the tough-as-nails stylings of the O.G. game. I for one really appreciated the new difficulty curve, as it allowed me to progress further into the game than I ever had in the past (I was even able to *gasp* beat the game).

If you’re freaking crazy, you might want to try your hand at Original, but I have a feeling that only the most hardcore of the hardcore are going to be playing that one for long. There’s even an Achievement for beating ‘Original’ Mode without taking any damage, possibly one of the most mind-numbingly hard Achievements I have ever encountered on Microsoft’s service. I have my doubts that there are going to be more than a handful of gamers taking down that one.

Whip It Good

All of the classic Earthworm Jim gameplay has made the transition to HD intact, and in some ways things are even tighter here than in the past. The control is not nearly as loose as it was in the classic 16-bit versions of the game, and the sharper visuals actually help make the game’s path a little clearer. I always had trouble in Earthworm Jim games with telling which objects were part of the background, which would impede my progress, and which would outright kill me. This problem is still present in the XBLA remake, although it is much less pronounced than it was.

The thing I always loved so much about Earthworm Jim (besides the crazy-awesome rogues’ gallery) was the huge variety in gameplay. One minute you’re using your own body to swing from hook to hook, and the next you’re bungie jumping over a lurking monster while trying to slam some snot demon into the jagged rocks surrounding you. It’s all just as zany as it was 15 years ago, and there’s really still nothing like it.

Though the actual platforming controls have been the scourge of Earthworm Jim games past, in the HD remake, they’re actually quite serviceable. Jim leaps, swings, rides hamsters, and launches cows with ease. There’s not nearly as much fumbling around trying to grab a ledge that’s just out of reach as there was in the original. Additionally, the camera is more zoomed out, allowing you to see more of the stage at once, and this ends up being a pretty huge boon to the game as a whole. Though I got lost once or twice, I found that it was much easier to navigate the sprawling levels than it was the last time I tried my hand at this feat.

There’s also some bonus levels included in the package that are newly designed specifically for this HD remake. Though these are small in number (there’s only three total), they are just as fun as the main game’s levels, and are nearly as funny. Keyboard Cat as an evil villain just makes too much sense.

Enough Of This Witty Banter

Despite all of the other additions, most people are probably going to be snatching up this title purely for the visual makeover. Those people wouldn’t be entirely wrong in doing so. The recreated sprites and the redone backgrounds all look awesome. Jim’s animations were always pretty smooth, but this time around they are just stunning. Everything flows beautifully, and it makes the game even more charming than it already was. The game looks super snazzy, and definitely does justice visually to the Earthworm Jim namesake.

Earthworm Jim has never been the best platforming franchise, but it has been the wackiest. The huge cast of crazy characters including such all time greats as Evil the Cat, Psy-Crow, Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt (Queen Slug-For-A-Butt for short) comes to life in beautiful HD, and the franchise is all the better for it. I was never able to experience the entirety of Earthworm Jim, and now that I have, all I want to do is play through again.



Don’t think I forgot what is certainly the biggest inclusion to this XBLA remake, multiplayer. The game’s multiplayer offering allows gamers to play through several stages with up to three friends. This mode is available both online and off. Though the online mode is fairly lag-free, it’s still noticeably less fun than its offline counterpart. As I saw time and time again with New Super Mario Bros. Wii when compared to Little Big Planet, 4-player cooperative platformers are made for people to play with their friends locally.

For the new multiplayer modes, the developers took the art templates from the game’s singleplayer levels, and then revamped them to make the whole thing flow better with more players. Players need to work together to progress, as there are simple switch, lever, and pulley style puzzles littered throughout the experience.

There are an equal number of levels in the multiplayer game as there are in singleplayer, though I breezed through them significantly faster than I did the singleplayer levels.  For some reason, there are fewer bosses in the multiplayer mode, which is definitely too bad. The boss fights have always been one of the shining stars in Earthworm Jim, so it’s too bad that we had to skip past so many of them.

Though the overall focus of the multiplayer mode is cooperative gameplay, there’s still an emphasis placed on competition as well. Players are given scores for each stage based on how many enemies they killed and how many powerups they collected. This vaguely competitive gameplay is certainly fun, although there’s no real incentive to beat your friends, as the ultimate goal is still progression, not high score.

I had a blast playing through the game with the rest of the GameXplain crew, but it was almost over too soon. We never had much trouble with any of the levels, so we beat the whole thing in less than two hours. Though it was fun, that enjoyment was fleeting, and not quite vast enough to lure me back in for another play through. I’d much rather try my hand at a higher difficulty in the singleplayer game. Still, the multiplayer offering in Earthworm Jim HD was a nice inclusion, it just could’ve used a little more in the content department.