Game Vortex writes: "Backgrounds and level designs are crisp and clean in Worms: A Space Oddity. The theme here is space, of course, so there are appropriate starry backgrounds and alien planet scenes. As always, the scenery is like a flat cardboard cutout, and weapons will just eat perfect circular chunks out of it. Someday it might be nice to see some terrain physics enter this game. The worms show up nicely as well and all the tiny weaponry is pretty easy to distinguish. The only problem that showed up was some very tiny icons in the customization menu. They were very hard to make out, but once you went back into the game, you could see the flags, helmets, and other customized items fine. Otherwise the menus were big and colorful, making it easy to find your way around. The space theme is carried on throughout with switches, lights and other things you'd expect to find on a sci-fi ship's console. It's actually an entertaining interface to navigate through.
Again you've got the worms yelling out (tiny) taunts and yells in several styles of speech and different languages. The music is over-dramatic, in a humorous clash with the tiny cartoon worms. Again, it's all part of the formula at this point."
With 10 titles released in the last 13 years (not including the countless expansion packs and spin-offs), it seems those annelids have more than most in the stamina stakes. Still it could be argued that despite a brief and largely unnoticed foray into 3D, very little has changed or evolved in those years, though that is probably part of the appeal.
Gamebosh:
"If Pac-Man is a distinctly 80's icon of arcade games then Worms was very much an icon of the 90's PC shareware phase. Endless hours could be had simply finding ways to launch full-scale assaults on other teeny tiny worms on the other side of little rocky hills. There have been many incarnations, so it was inevitable that Worms would get the Wii make-over."
Worms is a turn-based strategy game where teams of worms battle across bizarre randomly generated landscapes, or across finely crafted custom-designed levels.
Each team takes turns to pick off the opposing team using crazy weapons, tools and other utilities they have discovered or whatever foul strategies they can conjure up.
Worms die when they lose all of their energy or plunge into the icy depths of the water surrounding the landscape. The winning team is the one that manages to survive the mayhem and have worms left standing when the dust settles.
Each worm has an arsenal of devastating weapons at their disposal, some of which have a limited supply so strategy must be used to achieve maximum carnage. Weapons such as bazookas, grenades, dynamite, exploding sheep, old ladies and the dreaded concrete donkey all make an appearance adding to the fun and destruction!
The simple appearance of the game belies the fact that beneath the surface lies a cunningly designed strategy game able to weed out the tactical wheat from the chaff. Worms can in fact be played in many different ways: some players opt for wanton destruction (nicknamed 'the light side'), while others are so underhanded that they wreak vengeance at every opportunity: these so called 'dark-siders' will use any tactics necessary to win the match, typically digging in and making themselves hard to kill.
