Simplicity Is A Good Thing

Some of the best games of all time are not only fun to play, but they are based on simple concepts. The Worm games come from a great pedigree, which is Scorched Earth. Scorched Earth was an old PC game where you aim your tanks guns to try and shoot other players on a 2D map. There are many different weapons and support abilities, which you can use you, attack enemy tanks. The game didn't look great, but it made for a great party game because it was heavy on strategic competition.

Worms took the same concept roughly 3 years ago and improved the graphics and interface so that less computer savvy people could play it with ease. After many reincarnations on the PC it was eventually ported to the Playstation. This didn't go as well.


Initial Impressions

The first ominous sign is when you first boot up the CD onto your Playstation, it has you choose your spoken language and gives you roughly 9 different options. The menu system is very convoluted and hard to understand. Even if you read the directions, you don't know what kind of game you're starting. The menus use very little subtext to clarify where you're going and what certain selections mean. I had to write a cheat sheet of how to select the game I want. In the PC version it was very easy to setup a quick game with X number of computer players and X number of human controlled players all on X number of teams. This isn't as easy to figure out even if you have the manual.


The Game's Features

As I mentioned before the point of this game is you take your team of worms (usually between 4 and 8) randomly placed on a 2D map and use your array of weapons to kill other worms also randomly placed on the map. The way you kill another worm is by lowering its life total from 100 to 0, or to blow away the bottom part of the map so that they fall into the water below. The game is turn based and once it's one of your worm's turn, you can use it to move all along the map. Once you're all positioned, you select your weapon trajectory and hold down the fire button to shoot. The longer you hold down the fire button the farther your projectile will travel.

You have many different weapons to choose from. You have your standard rocket launcher and grenades. However you have more unique weapons as well like sheep that run across the map before making a huge explosion. You also have a Star Trek style transporter, and ninja rope to help you traverse the 2D map. This is just a sampling of the weapons, but there are tons available in the game for you to use.

Every so often care packages are dropped randomly on the map. Some contain health, while others provide weapons or just explode when landed on. You can obtain many unique weapons this way that can turn the tide of battle.

The game emphasizes comedy over any sort of hardcore violence. The worms have a high-pitched voice with a tone that mocks the military stereotype. The explosions are all cartoonish and you never see any blood. The game is clearly aimed at a preteen audience and I think it excels at its presentation.

As I also mentioned before, this game offers many different combinations of multiplayer action as well as many options for people playing alone. You can setup any combination of computer players and human players and teams. You can customize the map as well as the weapons allowed. In single player mode you can control your whole team of worms or add your worm to a team of computer players. There is also a campaign mode where you can participate in 43 different missions where you try and perform specific feats. I'm not to fond of this mode since it really deviates too much from the core of the action.


A Word About Computer AI

The artificial intelligence of the computer players is very very bad. First off, it's not realistic. The computer players can use pinpoint timing and trajectory to hit your worm square on from all the way across the map. I don't think a mechanical engineering professor could calculate that precisely every time. While you're struggling to find the right direction and velocity in an ever-changing wind speed (and direction), the computer is firing away knocking you for 40 damage almost every time.

Secondly, while the computer players are strong with their trajectories, they are weak when it comes to battle strategy. They do not use many of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal to finish you off. Rather they bomb away for relatively minimal damage each time. When they have the option to move in for a better angle using the ninja rope, they opt not to instead using a better-placed weapon. They also do not take advantage of the terrain as well. They opt to do damage rather than aim to knock your worm into the water for an instant kill.

As a programmer this is really lazy programming and lazy management. It's not all that hard to incorporate some accuracy (or in this case inaccuracy) variables into the CPU worm's makeup. All it takes is some simple numerical analysis knowledge instead of having the computer solve for the correct trajectory each time. Then it won't be hard to have the worms start to use the other weapons to maximize their damage and general strategy. If the people at Ubi Soft were really sharp, they could even have the worms adapt to the intelligence of specific human players by setting up your own character profile. This would increase the replay value immensely. Unfortunately, this game still suffers from the same problem that exists in the PC version. Amazingly, the game is balanced in that the computer's insane trajectory calculations and minimal use of it's arsenal are a match for your own innovative nature and lack of computational skills.


What Else Should I Know?

The graphics are good, but appear really blurry in this version. The PC version has some really crisp cell shaded graphics. However, this version isn't all that great and I have the 5-pronged PS2 adapter to the TV installed.

The sound is top notch. The taunts are the same as in the PC version and are sparse and varied enough that you never really get sick of them. There is no need to add anything here since they have a good voice formula. The other sounds are pretty good as well, but like the graphics are blurry, the sound effects are a little muffled.

The replay value is great as a party game. You can play this for hours on end. In the single player mode, it gets a little tedious. Also, if you're good enough, it may become boring to play against the computer opponents. The missions are short lived and are pretty repetitive.

Even though there are single player campaign missions, there is no story to speak of. However, don't worry about that as it wouldn't add anything to the game, nor would it fix any of its glaring problems.


The Verdict

The overall value of this game rates low for two major reasons. The first is that the game is not very good in single player mode. The computer AI is just too poor. When playing with friends, the menu system rears its ugly head to make customization (a high priority with lots of people) a complete nightmare. I'm really surprised that Ubi Soft took a proven game and ruined it with laziness. It's a real shame, but all too common in the console market.


Recommended: No