Worms gameplay mechanics are really quite simple. Those new to the franchise will be up to speed in a matter of minutes after playing through the Tutorial Challenge which walks you through the game basics, explaining the HUD, movement and weapons. Each team takes turns at destroying the opposing team's worms using the variety of weapons at their disposal. Your soldier worms die when they lose all their health or get knockled into the water and the winner is the team with the last worm or worms standing. If it sounds simple, it is. While the basics are simple to grasp, the game's charm lies in its humour (war has never been this much fun) and strategic depth.
London hasn't seen this much action since the Blitz.
A turn time indicator keeps the game moving along and adds a little pressure as you select your weapon and victim of choice. Each team has an arsenal of weapons to choose from. Not all will be available in every game and some will be in limited supply, while some are more devastating than others. The banana bomb will cause mass carnage and shower the immediate area with smaller bomb fragments. The uzi on the other hand is an excellent choice when you simply want to blast a worm into the water at close range without harming your own worm in the process. You'll also need to pay attention to the Wind Bar and the Power Bar when firing certain weapons such as bazookas or grenades to ensure the weapon meets it's intended target and doesn't fall back to earth and kill your own worm.
Together with a range of weapons you can also choose to move your worm to safer ground using the teleporter, jet pack or the versatile ninja rope. Dig your way through the landcape either to hide deep in the ground or cut your way through the battlefield. Girders can be used as ramps or as protection, or you can simply raise the white flag and surrender. Throughout each game, crates will fall from the sky. Health crates will top up your worm's health levels while Weapons crates contain powerful or rare weapons such as homing missiles or exploding sheep.
Worms has always been a game best played against other people. As a multiplayer game, its gameplay is proven and addicitive. With that in mind, the two most important questions with Worms Open Warfare are 'how's the single player campaign' and 'how does the multiplayer shape up on the PSP?'
You see a cowardly worm, I see a born strategist.
Firstly to the single player campaign. In Deathmatch Challenge, your worms will face off against a number of computer teams in a range of challenges that become increasingly difficult. While initially enjoyable, there are a couple of glaring problems. The CPU is frustrating, at times making offensive moves with all the precision of a super computer, while at other times the CPU is as much as a threat as the UN General Assembly on a non-sitting day. Equally frustrating, the CPU takes its sweet time making its moves. Sure it's amusing at first to see the 'thought bubble' above the enemy worm and cycle through the various weapons choices as the worm decides what it's going to do, but after a few games you'll be wishing it would hurry up and take it's turn already.
Hopefully you're not too frustrated by the time you turn your attention to the multiplayer gameplay. Now whether caused by rushing to get the latest Worms game to market, or a desire to save on development costs, Team17's decision to largely ignore the games multiplayer potential is baffling. In short, multiplayer is severely crippled. There's no game sharing. The lack of game sharing in any PSP title is hard to fathom. Done right, it's a great tool to get your game into the hands of another PSP owner and hopefully impress them enough to buy a copy of their own. There's also no online infrastructure mode. It's ad-hoc mode only, which means you need to find another PSP-toting gamer with their own copy of Worms Open Warfare.
In reality, the only real mutiplayer action you are likely to get in is playing multiplayer on one PSP and handing the handheld around the room hot potato style. If that seems like an antiquated way to play multiplayer and a waste of your PSP's excellent wireless capability, it is! You can attempt to play multiplayer with one PSP, which is certainly a great deal more fun than single player. Unfortunately, much of the fun of the game lies in watching the other player's moves. The destruction they wreak is going to be lost on all the other players, unless you crowd around the screen like moths around a lightbulb. Sure, we all know the PSP screen is great but even it has its limits.
Fighting, fleeing or simply hiding regardless Worms Open Warfare shines visually.
Visually at least, Worms shine on PSP. The detailed wacky backdrops and the actual battlegrounds look great on the PSP screen. The shoulder buttons allow you to zoom in and out to take in the whole battlefield or get up close and personal. Execute a particularly devastating or ill-conceived attack and you'll be rewarded (or punished) with a more detailed replay. The UMD also contains some short animated cut scenes that you can view, but nothing you would watch more than once. Audio is acceptable. The worms have always been wise-cracking and humerous and the worms of Worms Open Warfare are no different. The music, while appropriate to the various themed locations, is not music you'd want to listen to for extended periods of time and at times is akin to being trapped in an elevator.
Worms Open Warfare could have been the perfect Worms game. But a lacklustre single player campaign and a crippled multiplayer mean this is only half the game it should have been. And we all know being left with half a worm is never a good thing.
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