Worms: Open Warfare

When it comes to animals that fight, some combative species spring straight to mind: cocks, pitbulls terriers, maybe you could even imagine monkeys with machine guns.

But worms with bazookas? A game based on that premise has got to be the result of one too many puffs of wackybaccy.

Whatever the inspiration, that's exactly what Worms: Open Warfare is all about – murderous worms and weapons. Lots of weapons, in fact, and not just bazookas either. You can take your pick from cluster banana bombs, exploding kamikaze sheep, and the dreaded prod, amongst others.

It's this sort of offbeat humour that's one of the reasons the Worms series has been around so long on other consoles. Because, unlike most games, the joy of playing isn't what you do – kill worms obviously. It's all about the setting in which you do it.

In Worms: Open Warfare, for instance, the best feature is the option to choose the voices of the worms. These range from obvious comedy turns such as Rasta or Angry Scots, but the most fun can be had with the proper European languages. Nothing sounds ruder than playing Worms: Open Warfare in Italian: 'Siete una vite senza fine guasto', which according to internet tool Babelfish translates as 'You are a dead worm'.

Such murderous sentiments are at the heart of the game, of course. Your team of worms is randomly scattered about a level, interspersed with the opposing team. Each worm then gets to make a move, whether that be transporting themselves to a better tactical position or unleashing one of their many weapons. The turns continue like this until one side wipes out the other or the game timer runs out when, like football matches that TV companies have paid too much money to sponsor, you're into sudden death. Here the health of all remaining worms is reduced to one (usually they start with 100) and the waters begin to rise. (Each level has water at the bottom of the screen, and when a worm comes into contact with the wet stuff, it's a goner: in sudden death, control of high ground is a winning strategy.)

And that, in a metaphor-mixing-nutshell, is Worms: Open Warfare. That's also the problem.

For a couple of hours, it's fun. Even after you've struggled trying to set up your first game, and got to grips with the inconsistent use of the touchscreen, it's a very pleasurable activity to fire bazookas and unleash airstrikes on opposing worms. Even fiddly things like the Ninja Rope are interesting to play around with. But soon enough the sheer randomness and lack of polish starts to wear you down.

For example, it's not uncommon to find yourself in an almost untenable position from the start of a level, and have to spend valuable turns and resources trying to regroup. Other times you might end up winning because the enemy artificial intelligence gets confused and commits suicide, which means you won but you don't really feel like you earned it.

There's also the game's presentation. In many places, it feels more like a technical demonstration than a fully-fledged game. There's no Career mode for example, so no building up a crack team of worms who get more specialised with each victory. Each worm is just another worm. Equally, while the backgrounds look great, the worms themselves are just pink splotches. Now there's probably an important technical reason they're so small, but it surely wouldn't be so hard to given them some individuality, even on a per-team-level. Worms in little helmets? Why not?

All of this is equally true when it comes to multiplayer. Up to four local players are supported, and there are plenty of options to set up the type of game you want, but Worms: Open Warfare should have been a shoe-in for the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Global online Worms would have been great, and simple to program because the game is turn-based. But apparently not.

All these little shortcomings together that knock down a game with great potential. Still, with Worms there's always a next time…