The Worms series is the Looney Tunes of gaming. There are few things as entertaining in Video Games as placing a comically large stick of dynamite in front of your buddy's worm and watching him fly through the sky. So it stands to reason that a portable version of Team17's classic series would be perfect—all the hysterical fun of the other games, but small enough for your pocket. Worms: Open Warfare 2 comes awfully close to fulfilling those dreams, but loses an important aspect in the transition.
If you haven't played Worms before, here's the quick and dirty intro course: Each player has a team of cute, cuddly worms, often with customized names and voices; the worms are used to blow away opponents in multiple hilarious ways. Pick a wacky weapon (say, an exploding sheep), choose your trajectory, power up your shot, and watch the carnage ensue. If your aim is true, your target will often fly miles into the air, letting out a glorious sound more like a death squeal than a death rattle. If, as is more likely, your grenade bounces the wrong way ... well, it was nice knowing you, and at least you entertained your friends with your spectacular failure and death.
Open Warfare 2 sticks to this not-broke-so-don't-fix-it formula. Right from the beginning, you're asked to name your elite team of worms, choosing their names, victory dances, ethnicities, and colors. These four worms are your avatars in the game's various modes, and you'll be spending quite a bit of time with them. Once your commandos are customized to your liking, they'll be ready to tackle the campaign mode, doing battle with enemy worms in stages from a variety of different eras, from pirate ships and WWII battlefields to futuristic space stations with low gravity. The objectives rarely change in Campaign mode, aside from a few "boss battles," but the variety of art styles and color schemes is at least aesthetically pleasing. The worms and landscapes are rendered in color 3D, once again showing off the surprising graphical prowess of Nintendo's handheld, while backgrounds are moving videos set in the map's historical era.
If you need a break from endless wormy slaughter, the Puzzle mode throws your team into specific map layouts with limited ammo and a lot of worms to take out. Your goal is to find the right way to finish off your foes. Think of the puzzle mode in Tetris DS, but with explosions and death. Puzzle mode is more cerebral than the standard missions, and a welcome break from the campaign.
Most fascinating in the DS version of Open Warfare 2 are the Laboratory missions, levels and mini-games designed to use the unique features of Nintendo's million-selling machine. One such mini-game tasks you with keeping your worm and his parachute afloat by blowing into the microphone, on levels that get progressively more difficult. While the main game doesn't give you any interesting ways of using the DS's more interesting capabilities, Laboratory mode flexes the handheld's muscles a little more. Without this mode, the game would be much more stagnant of a port.
Finishing these missions grants your team points that can be spent in the game's Store on more customization options, missions, map backdrops, and even more brutal weapons. Especially worth buying are the extra sound packs, many of which are familiar to long-time series fans. With everything unlocked, the content available is impressive for a handheld game, and there's a lot to keep you busy blasting worms into the deep blue sea. The game even comes with a landscape editor for custom maps, letting you paint your own crazy battleground.
It's the game's capacity for comedy and its impressive customization options that make it fun. Unfortunately, you'll more than likely find yourself bored with the single player content in a short amount of time. The strength of the Worms series has always been multiplayer, and unless you've got a core group of local friends to play with, you're in for a long, lonely road.
The game ships with online Wi-Fi play through Nintendo's WFC network. More games using this feature is always a great thing, but WFC is far from intuitive. Assuming your long-distance friends have picked up the title, you'll need their friend code for the game, then you'll have to organize a time for everyone to jump into the game's lobby. The game has ranked matches and leader boards if you're interested in just finding a random group of players -- slightly more acceptable here as there's no voice chat to deal with—but hooking up with your friends is often too high a hurdle to clear. None of this is Team17's fault, of course, but playing a multiplayer game is much more frustrating than it should be.
If you're going on a road trip or need to kill a few hours alone on a plane, Open Warfare 2 is an easy suggestion. There's a lot to chew through as far as single player content, and picking the title up for a random battle is easy and painless. If you're hoping for a core multiplayer experience, however, you'll likely find Nintendo's Wi-Fi network too frustrating to deal with.
