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Good: A relatively complete port of the 2D classic...

Bad: ...without proper multiplayer support

If you liked the PC worms: Go back and play those

The Worms franchise began its life years back on the PC as a simplistic but wildly addictive strategy game in glorious 2D cartoon graphics. With the release of Worms: Armageddon, the series became that much more addictive with the introduction of online multiplayer support. How wildly entertaining it was when you're carefully prepared and meticulously aimed bazooka round would thread it's way right into your enemy and blow his cartoony butt off the edge of the map and how many times you'd want to crush your keyboard when it was your worm that was flying off the screen. This was worms at its finest. Since then however, it's all been pretty much downhill with a few horrifically bad 3D renditions on the consoles and now Worms: Open Warefare on the DS & PSP.

Open Warefare plays exactly the way you would expect it to play, as it's essentially a port of the PC versions of old. The top screen is used for the 2D action while the bottom touch screen is used primarily for choosing your weapons or scrolling about the "map". Your team of worms battle it out with another team of wiggly creatures across a 2D cartoon plane using an array of equally silly weapons and accessories. It's pretty much that simple. However, the problems with Open Warfare begin here. A number of excellent (and admittedly hilarious) weapons and customization options have been removed from this port, likely for the sake of simplicity. As with many DS developers, Team17 must have felt that DS gamers either didn't want or couldn't handle all the options that the original contained. The absence of these features do not really effect gameplay too much, but it's a shame nonetheless. To their credit however, it is easy to jump right into a game and start playing.

While we're on the subject of missing features, where is the multiplayer support?! Even last year's "Worms 4: Mayhem" had online support, not that anyone really played it... With this edition, it is a huge omission, especially with the availability of Nintendo's Wi-Fi connection and the simple fact that Worms was meant for multi-play. Single pak download play is available for up to 4-players and it can be surprisingly fun... if you actually have 3 friends available to play. Hopefully, Nintendo will start getting tough with developers and start really pushing for games like this to include support for wi-fi play.

Open Warfare's gameplay options leave much to be desired, containing a quick play option, challenge mode and multiplayer mode. The challenge mode is, as is the general theme of the game, pretty simple. All of them involve easy "defeat the enemy" challenges, having lost the creative missions in the port to the DS, with most of them taking no more than a few minutes to beat. The game's A.I. is pretty weak as well. Either their shots are right on target or they accidentally blow themselves off the map without much in between. Too bad you can't find live players to play with at any given time online (cough, cough... wi-fi).

It's really a shame to see yet another Worms game receive this kind of treatment from Team17. The 3D renditions from 05' could always be attributed to the possibility that the series just doesn't translate well to 3D, but Open Warfare should have been so much better and there really is no excuse for this. It's just laziness. Fans of the series will be the most disappointed with this game, but are likely to be the only ones who might enjoy it as well. Quite honestly, you'd have to be a fan of the series to really enjoy Open Warfare and even then I imagine the interest would be fleeting at best. Wi-Fi support could have really saved this game and delivered an experience that fans would love, but as it is now, you'd have more fun re-installing Armageddon on the PC.

Graphics: C

Sound: C

First Play: C-

Last Play: D

Gameplay: D-

Overall: 62% D-