Worms World Party

Pros • Downright funny too • Frantic, surreal, and addictive gameplay	Cons • May be too similar to the previous Worms games for some
Bottom Line Thorough, funny, harmlessly violent and brutally Newtonian game with endless replay value--the newest incarnation of a gaming masterpiece. At first glance, Worms World Party looks and sounds like the goofiest, sweetest child's cartoon in the world---it's full of adorable animated worms, squeakily slinking their way around surreal, brightly-coloured landscapes, blinking their big eyes, chowing on clods of cartoon dirt, and piping acknowledgments like "Sir, yes sir!" in their tiny cartoon voices. Even your non-gamer girlfriend will think it's cute. It doesn't look like anything horrible is about to happen. And then things get weird: Out of thin air, a worm suddenly produces a tiny flame thrower (where was he keeping it? How is he holding it?), slinks his way over toward one of his annelid kin and opens up at point-blank range, sweeping the weapon up and down in small arcs as he sprays the segmented unfortunate and his immediate surroundings with jellied, flaming death. As the target worm spasms about in flames and pain ("Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!"), the spillover liquid fire eats its way into the ground, sizzling tiny trenches and scars into the smoking landscape. Having done his worst, the attacker retreats a few slinks, perhaps sensing what is coming: The target worm (who has perished in the attack) pipes a pathetic "See ya!" to whatever players may be watching, and then his carcass explodes, gouging out an even larger crater in the local terra firma. But it's not over yet: This final act of spontaneous worm combustion creates a minor shockwave which happens to send a nearby dormant land-mine clinking and skittering to stop right next to a hitherto totally uninvolved worm, who can only watch helplessly and wait as the mine's proximity fuse triggers and starts its countdown. Entire turns can go on like this, with each weapon detonation and carcass explosion triggering an entirely new round of kinetic synchronicity, each blast eradicating a little more of the landscape, the whole of which is constantly threatened by an ever-encroaching ocean which imperils all life (worms can't swim). Eyeball the strength and direction of the wind (thanks to the fluttering confetti which seems to fill the air for no adequately explored reason) and finesse a bazooka shell into the breeze at just the right angle, watching with pride as it arcs back over an intervening outcropping to detonate amidst a small pack of the enemy's worms, hurling bodies everywhichway.

Welcome to the surreal and good-naturedly violent world of Worms World Party, where armies of heavily-armed, well-equipped worms are out to destroy each other and whatever land gets in the way, and to hell with the Environmental Protection Agency. Drag out a fight long enough, and you can literally vaporize every last square inch of ground, to the point where there is no safe place left to stand: Mutually Assured Destruction. Now that's a computer game, as well as “edutainment” for the kiddies!

Worms World Party adds to the cultishly-popular Worms experience with 45 new single-player missions (tough ones, too--veteran players will instantly be on their toes, and beginners will have their work cut out for them for weeks), an explanatory Wormpedia which covers weapons, tactics and in-game goodies, and lots of new gameplay schemes which can be randomized with a “wormpot” slot-machine feature for mind-boggling replayability. Some of these new schemes include slippery/stick surfaces, extra damage for certain classes of combat (melee, explosive, etc.) and even a David and Goliath mode which pits special uber-worms against teams of lesser creatures.

As in previous Worms games, players can freely design their own battle terrain and customize their worm teams for home or online play with special banners, weapons and voice-sets. In fact, Worms World Party is, if anything, a little too recognizeable, and resembles simply another expansion pack, albeit a good one--only this more-of-the-sameness keeps the game from rating a perfect 10 in terms of gameplay, style and replayability. Worms World Party truly fits the old easy-to-learn-hard-to-master designation, and as such is also an ideal game with which to introduce casual gamers (and hitherto reluctant girlfriends) to the pasty, monitor-illuminated world of PC strategy gaming.

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