Worms: A Space Oddity

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.