Appallingly Stupid
That’s about how I’d sum up the single-player experience of Worms Open Warfare on the Nintendo DS. This game features the stupidest AI on planet Earth. There were smarter games on the Atari 2600 with it’s 128 bytes of RAM.
Other than that, and a few quibbles, it’s a fine game. Don’t get me wrong - I like it. Blowing up worms is always a satisfying way to pass the time. But don’t expect a real challenge from the single-player experience, as there isn’t one to be had.
On to the specifics. I’ll even try to make this look like a real review.
Graphics: It’s 2-D worms. It looks like every other 2-D worms game. Simple, colorful, and cartoony. The top screen is where the action happens. You’ve got your landscape, your worms, etc. The L trigger zooms out for a little more view at the expense of losing the worm strength details. The lower screen is your weapon select menu, team health stats, and a map. Having these on the lower screen keeps them from cluttering up the game display, which is nice. And the touch-screen weapon menu is an obvious use of the tech that DS brings to the table.
Sound: Sounds like every other Worms game. The music is decent, the effects good, and the dialog as silly as ever. There’s a bunch of sound banks for the dialog, just like in other versions. My favorite: Redneck.
Control: A few annoyances. They made the two jump buttons behave exactly the same, and the double-tap for the backflip doesn’t always get interpreted, so sometimes you jump off the ledge and fall (usually on a land mine). And you cannot turn around when you are on a ledge and facing the wall, you always take a step, and fall. There are inconsistencies in the button used to alter the weapon properties. You use X to change the fuse time on your mines and grenades, but the Y button to change the attack direction of the air strike. Maybe the Y button was supposed to set the bounce on the grenades - but it doesn’t (more on that later). Otherwise, the controls do what you need them to. You can scroll through the whole landscape with the touchscreen map. It’s sensitive, though. Use the stylus or it dances like mad.
Gameplay: This is where most of my criticism comes in. In the single player, the AI is as dumb as a box of rocks, no matter the level. It’s more prone to cheating than it is to intelligent attacks. Here’s some of the dumb stuff it’s done:
- Walk off the end of a ledge and fall to its death in the water.
- Teleport into a land mine.
- Get behind one of its own teammates and attempt to shoot the bazooka - killing his compatriots.
- Walk near a worm and fire punch, completely missing for lack of taking one more step.
- Put down dynamite or a mine, and make no attempt to walk away.
- Shoot a bazooka shell into a crowd of his own worms just to get one of mine.
- Oh, when it can’t win, it’ll sometimes resort to cheating. Instead of the turns going round-robin, you’ll have one worm that gets skipped repeatedly while the computer kills him off. This usually happens to your worm that’s best positioned to polish one or more of his off.
- Finally, a great many times it cannot make up its mind and just burns the clock. I was starting to think that “wait for sudden death and hope that the water gets ‘em” was the strategy.
You get the point. This game is not smart. The only use for single player is to get accustomed to the weapons.
The weapons bring their own set of gripes.
First of all, there are only 15 weapons and 7 tools. Most of what’s missing isn’t terribly important, but a few are (at least to me) important to some strategies. There’s no bungee, no pneumatic drill (although the torch is more manuverable (-22.5 to 22.5 degrees, it seems), straight down is not an option.
Then we get to the strategic problems of some of the weapons. The homing missile does not travel very far after launch before adjusting to its ultimate target, making it far less useful than in Armageddon or World Party. The grenade and cluster bomb have only one bounce setting, and that’s “super ball”. What’s more, the grenade has a penchant for rolling up hill to get back to you. And the ridiculously small spread on the cluster bomb makes it all but useless.
Multiplayer: This is where everything is redeemed. Wireless single-cart or multi-cart. I’ve read the gripes about not being able to use your custom teams in a multi-cart game, but I don’t think that’s anything major. Unlike Worms Armageddon on the Dreamcast, or Worms World Party on the Game Boy Advance, you don’t have to pass the controller (machine) around the room to play. Everything else is still there, but at least you’re playing against a (presumably) intelligent being that won’t simply walk off ledges and self detonate.
So, while there’s room for improvement, if you have friends, this game is a worthy investment.