At the most basic level,
Worms: Open Warfare is the same tanks on a hill game many of us played on the Commodore 64. You know, the one where you decided the angle of shots and how much power to put into a shot. If you get everything right, you’ll score a hit. If not, you’ll hopefully get close enough to cause a little damage or leave a nice big hole in the ground. Sometimes you could even cause the ground to collapse from under your opponent.
Open Warfare works in the same way, only you’re given a considerably bigger pool of weapons. Weapons come in two basic varieties, short range and long range. Short range weapons include melee attacks like fireballs and Street Fighter-inspired uppercuts, as well as shotguns and machine guns. These are for those times when you can see the whites of your opponent’s big, cute eyes. Then there are the long-range weapons, which consist mainly of things that go boom, like rockets.
As impressive as the arsenal is, long-time players will feel short-changed. For whatever reason, a number of weapons have been removed or toned down. For example, the once-feared homing missile doesn’t have quite the range as in previous versions, making it less useful.
Open Warfare offers a small number of play modes, only two of which you’re likely to play often. On the single-player side of things, you can jump right into a Quick Play match or create your own custom match. A Challenge mode is also around, and will provide you with some entertaining obstacles to overcome, though I tended to go back to Quick Play matches more often.
There’s also basic multiplayer support, which is where most of the game’s fun factor comes into play. Up to four players can participate in games with only one cartridge, which should make it easier to find opponents. As much fun as multi-player games can get, it’s a shame that WiFi support isn’t included.
