Fun little game, but feels like it's lacking features and the dead-eye A.I. makes some challenges absurdly difficult
My first issue with the game is that when aiming, the targeting reticle follows a small, fixed arc right around your worm. This makes it very difficult at times to line up shots, especially long range ones but this goes for short ones also, because minor adjustments can mean the difference between a triple kill, hurting only one worm, and missing all of them, and it's hard to tell just how much a shift of the reticle will affect the shot. The power meter can be equally hard to gauge as well because it looks more like a multi-colored balloon being inflated by your worm than anything (though it's possible it was intended to resemble that considering the kitschy humor the game is built on). This aiming design and power "meter" combine to make a shooting mechanic that is difficult to master, and that's before you have to take wind speed and direction into account for each shot. Perhaps Worms combat has always been this way and longtime fans of the franchise might feel that changing it would be an egregious offense, but suffice to say I thought it could've been done better.
Anyways, all this wouldn't be too much of a problem though if the A.I. wasn't so absurdly accurate. Playing through the challenges, A.I. on the "strategic" and even the "cocky" difficulties were absolutely punishing. There were some sequences where I'd try to lob a grenade over a small ridge to hit a worm in a little ravine within sight or take some other relatively easy shot and end up missing, while the A.I. would retort the next turn by using a bazooka to fire a gentle shot floating a rocket up just high enough so the wind would catch it and carry it over a mountain and across the map and deposit it perfectly on the head of one of my worms. This wasn't an anomalous incident either, the A.I. routinely pulled off stunts like using a grappling rope to make its way across the map to where one of my worms was and then using a super punch or something to send him over a mountain to land in the water for an auto kill, and then there are the combos that they pull off like throwing a grenade into the wind so it was blown back to land right next to one of my worms in such a position that when it went off it would throw my worm on top of a trip mine, which would blow up and in turn send my worm to yet another mine that would then finish it off. Then if that wasn't enough to add insult to injury the game would decide that it was worthy of a replay and show it to me one more time. I know that games are no fun without some sort of challenge, but trying to compete against stuff like that transcends challenging and enters the realm of plain not fun. As of right now I'm still stuck on challenge 13 out of 20 and I honestly feel like a high school football team called the New York Jets that has somehow found itself on the same field as a buzz saw called the New England Patriots, but that wasn't bad enough so Bill Belichick still went ahead and taped my defensive signals so he could steamroll me that much more efficiently. If only I could complain to whoever is Roger Goodell at Team 17.
Moving right along, the game has two zoom modes - the default is relatively close in while the other is a wide view of the whole area, but on the whole I didn't find the wide view very useful. I suppose it does allow you to be able to quickly survey the whole battlefield and identify where upgrades are clustered and enemy worms are entrenched, but it's useless for combat. The tight arc that the reticle travels becomes microscopic when zoomed out so aiming from this view is impossible at best, when I felt like this view should have been for facilitating cross-map combat. I guess that reads as more of another gripe about the targeting mechanic, but I do feel like you should be able to control how much you zoom in or out along a spectrum, rather than being either zoomed in or zoomed out. I guess that's also just me being nit-picky trying to find more things to complain about after being thoroughly beat down by the A.I., but it's still a potential improvement.
Finally, the game could really use some other game type(s) in addition to Quick Play and the existing Challenges. If there was another challenge mode where there are a bunch of static targets on the map and you have to figure out how to destroy all of them with constraints like what weapons you can use, how far you can move/what items you can use, and how much ammo you have, that would go a long way towards getting you acquainted with some of the nuances of the weapons/items and introducing you to new ones that aren't covered in the feather light tutorial and which the game instead leaves to you to just figure out how to use while in combat. That's just an idea of mine for something I would like to see because as it is I agree with Gamespot's assessment that "a shortness of features makes it feel a little bare-bones." I also agree that it could use more backgrounds and some kind of editor to make your own maps and set the rules in a customizable game type.
There are aspects of Worms that are fun and that people would enjoy - funny voices, amusing weapons, destructible environment, things go boom and fly all over the place - but it does have a number of aspects that detracted from the enjoyment of the game, at least for me, and which prevent me from really recommending it to anyone. My advice is to at least play the trial first or better yet see if a friend has it on a memory card that you can borrow before you actually buy it. I am glad though that Microsoft found the willingness in their heart of hearts to take the time to throw in an Xbox Live Arcade game "free" with a $50 memory card to help soften the blow of being gouged for a glorified flash drive that can only move around gamer profiles. It actually did soften the blow a little. But I guess the bottom line is that despite its shallowness and shortcomings, Worms does its job as an XBLA game of being a fun little diversion between playing retail games.