Worms: Open Warfare 2

"This game should have been better."

If this game truly was a revival of the Dreamcast/PC Worms games like it was intended to be, it would have been one of the best PSP titles on the market. But its not. Even if this game has improved over the first Open Warfare by adding infrastructure mode and more weapons, it still has many problems that diminish your playing experience.

Basically, this is a 2D, turn-based action/strategy game. Each player has four worms on the map, and on a player's turn, they have a set amount of time to move around the map and attack. You can only use one worm per turn, and you can only attack once per turn. Worms can die if they run out of health points or if they fall into water. The last player (or team) with worms still alive wins. You start out with a bunch of weapons, but you can pick up more through crates, which fall out of the sky. You can also pick up game modifiers by picking up envelopes, which also fall out of the sky. These modifiers can give you twice more time on your next turn, give you the ability to see what weapon is inside a crate, give your weapons twice more power on your next turn, etc.

There is only 33 weapons in this game, which is more than in the previous Open Warfare, however this is about half of what was in Worms World Party for the Dreamcast, a game that was released 7 years ago. Half of the fun of a Worms game is being able to use many different weapons. Otherwise, you might as well be playing Tanks. The standard weapons for this, and every other Worms game, are the bazooka and the grenade. Most weapon schemes let you start out with infinite ammo for these two weapons. For these weapons, you have to aim the crosshair at the angle you want, and then you select the power by holding down the fire button. For some other weapons, like air strikes for example, you just place the cursor on your target and the weapon falls from the sky. Other weapons you simply drop, like mines and dynamites. When weapons blow up, they make a hole in the landscape. Generally, the more powerful the weapon, the bigger the hole it makes, and the fewer quantity of that weapon you start out with. Five new weapons have been added to the series. One of which is the cheapest piece of garbage ever created, the lightning strike. This weapon can be used on the gravestone of a dead worm to bring it back to life. When a player picks this weapon up in a crate and uses it, quickly the rest of the players leave the game. Its just no fair, and it unbalances what would be a fair fight. Attempting to climb over a ledge with a ninja rope is still frustrating, and instead of fixing the controls for the super sheep, they just changed it from up and down to left and right on the d-pad. The biggest problem with using weapons, is that they misaligned the crosshair. If you aim your weapon straight in front of you, it will actually go a little bit higher than where you aimed. After a little bit of practice, you can adjust yourself to it, but this is still an unforgivable mistake.

While we're on the topic of controls, they managed to make jumping and back flipping even worse than it was in the previous games. Your worm will jump in the wrong direction more often than in the right direction. Even the simplest of bumps in the land might take you several tries to overcome. Other than that, the controls are just fine. For those of you PC fans who are worried about being able to pan the map, the PSP's control nub works just fine for it.

There is some new gameplay features, but none of them really add much to the game. Some maps are in outer space, and have low gravity, which just makes you jump higher. Some maps have "special events" like fog, or bombs dropping out of the sky. They added race as a new multiplayer game type. Its not really fun, its just a competition of who can use the ninja rope better.

Now lets face it, this is a multiplayer game. If you don't have other friends to play with, or you don't have wireless internet, you'll only be entertained by single player for a few hours. There's only so much fun you can have playing against the computer. Of the single player game types, you can either pick custom game, time attack, story mode, puzzle mode, or training. Custom game is basically just setting up one battle, you get to pick the teams, the map, and the weapons. The story mode doesn't really have a real story, but it does have short animated cut scenes in between stages. Basically you just play through a bunch of battles, each with a different map and different starting weapons. The computer's AI in this game is either really bad or ridiculously cheap. In the first few levels of story mode, the computer will kill themselves for you. But then in the last few levels, the computer can basically throw a grenade, and have it ricochet off of 7 different walls, and it will magically hit you, no matter where you are on the map. Puzzle mode was the most fun single player option for me. In this mode, you have different objectives, and you have to use logic to think through how you can use your inventory to accomplish your goal. There is no time limit in this mode, and the enemies don't fight back. Unfortunately, these 30 puzzle stages can be completed quite quickly. Time attack is no fun, and training just lets you practice your aim on targets.

Luckily, your friends don't need to have this game to play with you. Since this game is turn-based, you can all play on the same PSP with one UMD, and just hand it off when you switch turns. The infrastructure mode is the saving grace of this game. Without it, I wouldn't have even thought of buying this game. However, even this was screwed up. Even though the back of the game box says that this game is compatible with the PSP headset, it isn't. You can't type messages in the middle of a game, only some customizable preset messages that you can make before a game. Lag makes using ninja ropes even worse than it already is, and the online population is quite sparse to the point that you usually won't find anyone online.

Instead of giving us more weapons, or making sure the basics like jumping and aiming were solid, the developers tried to win our affection by allowing us to unlock customizations for our worms. This includes changing the color of the worms, changing the gravestone, giving them hats, and changing the voices. Most of this is pretty worthless, except the voices. Some of them are pretty funny. On the topic of sound, all of the sound effects are ok, but nothing special. Frankly though, the music sucks. Its annoying as crap.

This game is fun if you play with your friends, but almost any other 2D Worms game is superior. Its worth a try for non fans of the series, but if you've played better games in this genre, you won't be amused.

Score: 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/01/08

Game Release: Worms: Open Warfare 2 (US, 09/04/07)