Worms

"Multi-Player Mayhem For Months On End"

Worms. They’re deadly you know? Yes quite! Worms was possibly the most unique of the early PlayStation games. Multiplayer mayhem was unleashed upon us as you, the player take on the role of 4 worms. Your aim is to blow up the other worms using a hilarious plethora of weapons. It sounds mad as a hatter and it is.
Your team of self-named worms can be placed on a randomly generated plain equipped with about 20 basic weapons to kill your opponents with. These weapons are divided into wind effected and unaffected, droppable, physical or helpful. Each weapon can deal a certain amount of damage when used correctly and hits the target. The battles are turn based and turn time can be altered to cause blind panic. If the allotted game time runs out, the sea beneath you begins to rise and drowns everyone in its wake. The only team with worms remaining at the end wins.
The controls are genius. Move your worm with the D-Pad and make it jump with triangle. Select lets you being up the weapon list and after choosing your weapon, press X to plant it, or after checking the wind direction, press the D-Pad to try to get the right arc for it to land where you want it to then press X. Square lets you view everywhere you want to go which lets you find worms-in-hiding that can be bombed.
The great thing about this game is that no two games are the same and that there are so many different ways to play it. You can run and away and build a trench to hide in. You could go for air attacks with Bazooka’s, Air strikes and Grenades or ground attacks with Mines, Dynamite or the fantastic Sheep! Even if all is lost, you can bow out in style and take someone with you with the Kamikaze. You don’t even have to hit the worms as the blowing force of the bombs will send them flying around, and possibly off the cliff edges and into the sea.
The sound is spot on, with cutesy “oh no’s” as they blow themselves up into their own graves, its great comic timing and just one huge blast to play.
The only problem is that playing singularly doesn’t have nearly enough satisfying edge as playing with friends as if you play a hard difficulty worms team, they will hit you every time and you never quite hit them back as well. The good thing though is the daft teams will do fantastic manoeuvres and end up killing half their own team!
Worms is a breath of fresh air and an addictive blast at that.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/02, Updated 06/30/03