Worms: A Space Oddity

No matter how many times we karate chop them, blow them up with deranged lambs, or nudge them off cliffs, the worms just keep coming back. WORMS: A SPACE ODDITY, roughly the gazillionth game in the Worms franchise, might be the annelids' first outing on the Wii, but it will nonetheless feel very familiar to anyone with previous experience playing these 2-D, turn-based strategy games.

Same formula as always: Players command small groups of creepy crawlies as they wiggle their way across the screen to destroy their equally legless enemies. The differences this time out are the sci-fi settings and the fact that you get to use the Wii's motion sensitive and infrared controls to issue commands.

Worms: A Space Oddity has an uneasy relationship with Nintendo's slender white controller. Tossing weapons like grenades by first pressing the B-button to control strength and then flicking your wrist in a throwing motion proves both more intuitive and precise than the series' traditional hold-down-a-button-and-let-go-at-just-the-right-time method. But using the same thumb to control both movement (via the d-pad) and jumping (the A-button directly underneath) is a little awkward, especially for those with small hands. Overall, it's an improvement in the way you interact with your worms, but it will take time for franchise fans to grow accustomed to the new controls.

Once players figure out the controls, it's pretty much business as usual. As always, you can customize your worms' names, appearance, and voices (there are several hilarious new personality types, including a mock-grave narrator), construct your own maps, and choose whether to play the single-player campaign or local multi-player matches. We recommend multi-player; four-player Worms games have always been -- and remain -- a terrific social gaming experience. Aside from a few new space-y weapons, like the UFO air strike and the Atom Pack explosive charge, the only legitimately fresh content is found in a handful of mini-games. One of these challenges sees players using the Wii remote's motion-sensitive functionality to pilot a little rocket ship through a rocky cavern, while another involves sorting and placing shapes to create an object. Fairly fun stuff, but, like the rest of the game, not particularly ground-breaking. It's probably not worth $50 if you have any of the more recent console-based Worms titles, but worth a look if you're new to the series and on the prowl for a simple and casual multi-player game.

Not available online
Genre: Strategy
Developer: THQ
Released on: March 17, 2008
Price: 49.99
ESRB Rating: E10+ for Mild Cartoon Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes