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Worms World Party Review - GBA

Worms is a series that most gamers would be familiar with. A long time ago, a bright spark at Team 17 thought that a good idea for a game would be to give a bunch of worms a large arsenal of weapons and have them blow each other up. What's even crazier than this idea is that the Worms series has turned out to be one of the strategy hit series for PC. So how does a game like this fair on the GBA, where limitations to the original formula would be needed?

Gameplay

Like many games these days where expectations are high, first we need to clarify what this game isn't. This is in no way the experience that is achieved from playing the recent Worms titles on PC. It's far too limited for the hardcore Worms players. That being said, it's still quite a bit of fun. Now for those of you who are new to the series, let me explain. The core of the game is in deathmatch. Here you are given an assortment of weapons such as shotguns, bazookas and grenades. The game is turn-based and in each turn a team gets to have a shot with one weapon (as well as moving around of course) at the opposing teams on the 2 dimensional plain. Does this sound simple? Well if it doesn't seem so, don't worry because you'll get the hang of it in minutes.

The maps for Worms World Party are as you would expect them to be. They are very well set out and offer all the ledges and little hide-aways that help to make every match at least partially different. Even though you can pan the camera along, you will still have trouble judging distance for some weapon shots. For example: For the Bazooka, you really need to concentrate on the distance and wind speed.

The developers have done their best to make the weapons as close to their PC version counterparts, but unfortunately they aren't quite what you remember. Ultimately they aren't terribly flawed, it's just it'll be a bit of an adjustment for players of the PC versions. The Ninja rope however has been absolutely destroyed, it's almost utterly useless. This was a crucial part of Gameplay but you manage to make do without it. It just seems rather impractical that it was left as it was where it was clearly flawed.

The AI of the game isn't terribly bad, but it does have its weak moments. The odd times where the enemy literally blows themselves up can leave you feeling a bit disappointed. Mostly though, they manage to survive but unfortunately they don't get progressively harder. All worms you face seem to sit at mediocre ability and what makes it harder is simply more worms. The real fun to be had with this game as always is with friends. It doesn't require multiple GBA's as this is a turn-based game so you can easily hand the GBA (continued next page)