Worms World Party

The Good
It is very easy to sit down and play this game for an hour or two with some friends and blow most of an afternoon. It is so much easier to play this than to organize it infront of a computer screen because you can take advantage of the multiple controllers.

The Bad
Where to begin...

If you don't have a keyboard you will easily know exactly what I'm talking about here. So many features don't work without one. Grenades are stuck on 3 seconds minimum bouncing. You can't change that no matter what you do. Meanwhile a computer will land every grenade on top of your head with any of the 1-5 second times. That is assuming that they don't kick it in the wrong direction (which they seemed to do a lot.)

Girders are forever stuck in the vertical 2 section postition. Great for blocking horizontal shots but not much else. Computer players again can rotate and place them anywhere.

There are no saving and customizing features at all. You have a few preset weapon schemes and teams but you can't do much else with them because every time I tried to save a team it would be deleted. There wasn't even an option to change my weapons schemes as far as I could tell.

Missing weapons... sure this was an internet game but just because it's internet doesn't mean that you need to cut out some of the best weapons. All stuff involving napalm and animations of objects were missing. Things that didn't even need to be syncronized were missing. Crates didn't dance and barrels didn't shift. Everything seemed static.

The Bottom Line
Exactly like Worms World Party for the PC, only with less features and fewer weapons, and worse control. Go for the PC version if you are looking in the Worms franchise.

The Good
The follow up to Worms Armageddon is a respectable game in it's own right, just don't touch it if you already own Armageddon.

GAMEPLAY

Team17's hilarious Worms franchise has developed quite a cult following in Europe and it is easy to see why. You control a team of cute little worms in a myriad of different and wacky environments as you basically try to blast the hell out of the other worm team. The 2D maps are destructible and can be used to your advantage. A couple of good maps are "Jail Break" where one team gets a fortress and hides in it as the other team tries to "smoke them out" with all sorts of wacky weapons. "Ahoy Matey" is another great map where two pirate ships face each other and the worms try and battle for supremacy. You control the worms with your keyboard's directional buttons and you jump with enter and backspace. Very simple and easy to master. Hotkeys and the mouse are used for selecting weapons and firing is simple as guessing the trajectory of your missile. In a clever twist, there is wind (which is visible in the background) so a bazooka shot may curve right back at you if you fire into head-wind. Clean simple menus offer great navigation and customizability of your worms and your game type is mind-boggling.

PRESENTATION

The worms' voices are hilarious and you can select over 40 different voices such as Redneck, British, Russian and Cyber-Worm for your team! The high pitched squeaks along with the stereotypical accents make for great fun. "Yes ma?" one Redneck worm squeaked as I selected him but sadly shouted "Dangit!" moments later as he was killed by a wayward napalm strike wrought on by the evil team "Breakfasts". Brilliant...

FUN

This game is meant to be taken light-heartedly and it shows. Weapons include a Sheep that blows up 5 seconds after launching, an old lady that spells doom for anyone near her, a poisonous skunk and a couple of uber-weapons that are absolutely hilarious - not to mention deadly.

MULTIPLAY

The game really shines here. Log on to Wormnet for some really frantic action or get a couple of buddies on the same computer and take turns kamikazing and whacking each other to death in HotSeat. The tactics you must devise are surprisingly practical if you want to win.

The Bad
* Not that many weapons are present. Strangely the real fun ones are very rare to find on the maps as the crates scattered about are always in hard to reach places. You could always cheat...

• Another bad thing is that this is essentially a rehash of Armageddon with a multiplayer online option tossed in. Shame on Team17 for such an evil commercialization of a product!

• If you play alone you might be bored as the AI is sometimes very stupid and other times godly.

The Bottom Line
If you own Worms Armageddon pass this one up, but if you're a Worms-virgin then pick this game up and start worm smackin'!