Worms 2: Armageddon Review

AveryZoe

September 27, 2010

orms is back, and guess what? Now you can play it one the PS3. Score! From Team17, the makers of...well, Worms (and a few other games, of course) comes Worms 2: Armageddon, which is now available as a download from Playstation Network.

This is definitely the Worms you know and love, and gamers who have never tried Worms before are in for a treat. This is, at it's best, a multi-player game where players compete on teams consisting of five worms who have got some serious violence issues and even more serious weapons. The game is turn based, with each team getting one turn, which alternates between however many worms remain on each team. You are also timed on each turn, which sometimes forces you to make quick decisions and aim fast. Your goal is to obliterate the opposing teams, and there are many different ways you can do this. Go high tech and send a homing missile, go low tech and send your opponent off the edge, or go wacky and send an explosive sheep in for the kill. There are many weapons to choose from, and the weapons available vary from level to level. You will also find that some weapons are limited to a certain number of uses on some levels. Other weapons may only become available after a certain number of turns have passed, so there is a lot of strategy mixed in amongst the point and shoot.

Being worms, your characters are somewhat limited in their movements, and are generally placed in out of the way spots on the various maps. Each map presents its own challenges, ranging from avoiding getting smacked into the water (which means instant death) to having to dig, jump, jetpack, or teleport your way to battle. There are also various tools available to you, including a blowtorch and a ninja rope. Drill through the terrain to reach your opponent, swing off ledges to line up the perfect shot, use girders to build bridges across gaps in the terrain--you are really limited only by your imagination (well, and by the usage limits on certain levels). If you can't reach your opponent, you won't have much luck killing him, so these methods can be useful to reach the optimum position to lay waste upon the opposing teams.

Even in single player mode, there really isn't a story to this game beyond "blow up all the other worms." It is a simple yet oddly addicting premise. Newcomers to Worms games can choose to play through a tutorial, but veterans of the series should have no trouble just picking up and playing. The Campaign mode consists of 35 levels, which are mainly made up of battles against increasingly difficult computer teams. There are some puzzle levels mixed in though, which don't contain any opponents but require you to use your weapons to reach your goal. Don't worry though--if you don't succeed the first time, you can just try, try again.

The graphics are about what you would expect from a Worms title: cute little worms that roam around simple levels. There aren't a lot of high tech graphics involved, but that is part of the charm of the Worms series. One huge benefit of the PS3 version is that it much easier to actually see your worms. Everything is quite clear, and visually pleasing in a simple, no-frills way. The sound is very similar to the other Worms titles: your Worms fire off various one-liners in squeaky, chipmunk voices, and repeat them often.

You can create different teams of worms at any time, and this is where the fun comes in. The characters are customizable, and you can choose their voice style, hat, worm color, and even the tombstone that appears when your characters die in a dramatic explosion. There is a pretty sizable selection to choose from. Voice styles include many foreign languages (French, German, Italian, etc.) as well as off-beat various choices like Snitch and Double-Oh-Seven. Your hat choices include such timeless styles as the cowboy, the pirate, and the bandana, mixed in among your various military headgear and the occasional top hat. The tombstones range from Celtic Cross to a pile of skulls, to a couple of daisies--so you can play around with it and have fun creating teams and naming each worm after various presidents, mafioso, or cartoon characters.

While you won't get dozens of hours of gameplay out of the single player campaigns, the real fun in Worms lies in the multi-player mode. Gather up your friends (or play online) and prepare to wage war. You really need to play around with the weapons and work on your aim to excel at this game, but that's all part of the fun. There is nothing that says Worms quite like using all your time up lining up the perfect shot and firing gleefully at your opponent--only to realize that you've managed only to blow up your own worm...again.