Worms 2: Armageddon Review
There something to be said for the lowliest of creatures. Whether they be MySpace programmers or the tiny annelids that till the soil of our gardens, worms play an important role in the world. They also happen to blow the snot out of each other on Xbox Live.
Worms 2: Armageddon is just the latest in a series of games, born on the PC almost 20 years ago. Players use a myriad of weapons from grenades and bazookas to concrete donkey statues and flying sheep to take out your opponents team of worms. Worms 2 re-introduces a lot of the weapons and options missing from the first Xbox Live outing and improves on everything from graphics to sound to gameplay.
The biggest reason to play Worms 2 is the humor, as has been for all it’s predecessors. The gameplay is super simple: aim your given weapon at the nearest opponent, adjust the power behind it and make sure to accommodate for wind strength and direction, and avoid any environmental hazards. That alone might be engaging for a few rounds, but it’s the subtleties that makes this a party game for the ages.
When grenades, mines or sticks of dynamite are within inches of a worm, he screams briefly at the top of his lungs and I laugh just about every time they do. Nothing gives more pleasure than to land a well thrown frag grenade at the tail of an enemy worm and hear him yelp right before being blown sky high. Color commentary comes from the little wrigglers too. Snarky remarks are volleyed from the opposite team members in one of dozens of voices chosen by the player. My team members sounds like a movie-announcer guy “In a world…”, but I’d like to have had more phrases. Some single player levels can be incredibly difficult and you quickly cycle through all the available remarks.
Customization doesn’t end there though. Players can tint the color of their worms and better yet, add hats to distinguish themselves better on the battlefield. Then there’s the gamut of weapons. The Concrete Donkey makes its triumphant way onto the Xbox after a noticeable absence from the first XBox Live version. New instruments of explosion include Bunker Buster bombs, the Buffalo of Lies and automated Sentry Guns just to name a few. New strategic utilities have been added as well. The Electromagnet provides an interesting twist by either attracting or repelling metallic projectiles.
Developers Team 17 added a few extra game-play types to the standard blow-the-other-team-up way of play. Forts separates the two teams with a body of water rendering close-combat techniques completely useless. Ninja Rope Race throws out weapons all together and makes players swing as quickly to the finish line of a level using only the Ninja Rope and their reflexes. Don’t like the presets? Make your own by choosing an environment, weapons, health limits… you name it.
The title deserves high marks for sure, combining simple gameplay with a strong dose of humor and beautiful HD graphics, but the single player difficulty is tweaked a little too high. The same can be said for the achievements. So far, of the 12, I’ve only been able to unlock 1 (throw the Holy Hand Grenade). The controls could have stood for another few days of testing too. Performing a back flip is needed to solve some of the single player puzzles not to mention get yourself out from the tighter spots of maps that have been blown away. All of our play testers experienced problems back-flipping; either they would jump forward (sometimes killing themselves in the process) or do a back flip and have it immediately jump forward after landing.
Those issues aside, Worms 2: Armageddon provides hours of entertainment for up to 4 people locally or on Xbox Live. Bait has never been this much fun and at a paltry 800 MS points, it costs less than a day at the lake and a tub of night crawlers.
