If you haven’t played a Worms game, you should have your gaming license revoked. The series has been around for years and has made appearances on virtually every platform. THQ brings the franchise to the Wii and throws the little fellas into space. Here is a breakdown of some of the facets of Worms: A Space Oddity for the Wii:
Presentation and Graphics: Worms: A Space Oddity looks pretty good for a Wii title. It’s nowhere near the level of detail as the Xbox Live Arcade version of Worms, but it looks pretty good. Where the title suffers though is the presentation. The menu system is aggravating at best. All of the menus utilize the Wii remote and its motion controls, which is to be expected with the system. However, all buttons you see are very small, some to the point of being smaller than the finger you use to point at things on the screen. This makes it difficult to navigate certain areas, such as changing the stage or picking your team. Other places it’s difficult to differentiate what is and is not a button. This is definitely an area Team17 could work on for the next release. 6.5 of 10
Sound and Music: True to Worms style, there are a wide variety of voice types to choose from for your little fighters. From Computer to Italian to Martian, there will be a couple styles you’ll find that you enjoy. Sound effects for each weapon type sounds great. Background music is a bit Martian in style, which fits with the game’s space theme. However, both the background music and voice overs will repeat often. It seems like Team17 could have added a bit more in this area. 7 of 10
Gameplay: The Wii controls for Worms: A Space Oddity work out really well in most areas, which is a plus. Many third party games have failed to achieve a good usage of the motion sensing controls, but THQ and Team17 did a good job. If you’ve never played Worms, you take control of a team of four little guys against another one to three teams, either CPU controlled or used by other players. You take turns using your worms to attack, defend, move, etc. to try and defeat the other teams. Once your health drops to zero (it starts at 100), your worm kicks the bucket. Lose all four worms on your team and you can kiss the round goodbye.
True to Worms style, there are plenty of weapons to choose from to destroy your enemies and the environment. New to A Space Oddity are a UFO for air strikes and a robo-sheep which you control for precision detonation. Other new and classic weapons are available, all of which utilize motion controls. Once you select your weapon, you set the power of the shot by tilting back the Wii remote and hitting the B button. Firing projectile weapons is done by flicking the Wii remote forward and releasing the B button. Melee weapons require similar combinations of the B button and moving the Wii remote. You’ll be able to detonate bombs by pushing the Wii remote down like a plunger, which works well and makes you chuckle. Along with the controls, a new addition to each stage is the gravity level. Since you’re in space, you need to consider the gravity of the map along with the wind to plan the trajectory of your attacks.
There are a variety of gameplay modes in Worms: A Space Oddity. You have a single player story mode, six mini-games, a level editor, and multiplayer. The story mode is fairly bland and won’t keep your attention for too long. The mini-games are a nice addition, but again, they aren’t somewhere you’ll spend a lot of time. I enjoyed the level editor for making my own stages a good deal. This is a feature that was also present in the most recent DS version of the game. There are a decent amount of options available to you to customize just how the stage will play.
The one place the game suffers is the camera system. To pan around the map, you hold the “+” button and move the Wii remote around the screen. The problem is that the motion controls in this respect are entirely too sensitive. When using the Wii remote to point at the screen in any other aspect of the game, it behaves as you would expect. But when moving the camera, even the slightest movement of the Wii remote sends the camera flying off the edge of the screen in that direction. With a time limit for every turn, you could waste quite a bit of your precious seconds trying to see just what’s going on and who to attack because of the sensitive controls. 7.5 of 10
Multiplayer: Multiplayer is the heart and soul of the Worms franchise, and A Space Oddity is no different. You can play with up four players locally to see who can cause the most damage. You can easily use your created stages in multiplayer, which is a nice thing. However, there is no online multiplayer in the game, something that was initially promised by the developers at Team17. Being restricted to only playing friends in your living room is a huge downfall of the series and really takes away from the replay value of the title. 6.5 of 10
Lasting Appeal: While the gameplay is solid, the lack of an online multiplayer mode is a major hindrance to how long Worms: A Space Oddity will keep your attention. The best option is if you have three other friends that will want to play Worms on a regular basic. 6 of 10
Final Word: I don’t think there’s enough here to justify spending $50 on Worms: A Space Oddity. Unless you have enough friends to play offline on a regular basis, I’d leave this game in the rental category.
Overall: 6.75 of 10
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