Worms on the PSP! What's not to like?
I must admit that I've been an avid Worms fan for quite some time, and Worms Open Warfare 2 for the Sony PSP certainly does justice to the widely beloved franchise. For those of you who don't know, Worms is a 2D, turn based strategic shooting game, reminiscent of the 'Scorched Earth' and 'Gorillas' MS DOS games. The player controls a team of 4 'worms', and tries to defeat opposing teams by: a) knocking their worms off the battlefield and into the water (worms cant swim), or b) bombarding their worms until they die. The last team standing is the winner. Simple.
What has always made the Worms games special is their selection of wacky weapons. The game not only features a standard arsenal of grenades, shotguns and bazookas, but also the explosive 'sheep', the devastating 'banana bomb', the hilarious 'concrete donkey' and the 'holy hand grenade', to name but a few.
Worms Open Warfare 2 differentiates itself from the previous game by offering an array of customisation features. The player can create their own levels with a pretty intuitive, if not slightly limited level editor. They can change the look of their worms with different hats, victory dances and accents. There is a 'shop' system, whereby the player can win money by thrashing enemy worms in battle, and buy new accessories for their worms, campaign mode levels, and music tracks among other things.
There are however several things that detract from the polish of this game.
-The Graphics are not very pretty. The textures used to decorate the battlefield are ugly without exception; the game would be better off with just simple bricks or earth textures. The animated backgrounds are also rather pixelated.
-The story mode feels rather superfluous, with the objective of each stage being variations on 'obliterate the enemy'.
-The level editor feels limited, although it's really easy to use. It would be nice to be able to create bigger levels and set the positions of the random objects.
-The pace of the battles could be faster, with numerous 'crate drops' and replays interrupting the flow of the game.
-The computer has an unfair advantage with jetpacks that don't run out of fuel. They can easily traverse the battlefield, while the player can only travel a short distance.
-On the harder modes, the computer pulls off crazily unfair shots.
If you are a fan of the Worms series and own a PSP, this game does nothing revolutionary, but is definitely worth picking up if you can find it. If you've never played a Worms game before, you owe it to yourself to try it.