Worms (XBLA) - Review

After appearing on just about every gaming system known to mankind, it’s perhaps a little ironic that the most natural place to experience Worms is on a new(ish) system like the Xbox 360; when else in history has getting a multiplayer game going been this easy, after all? 

This iconic 2D artillery game, after numerous iterations beginning way back on the Amiga, has been trimmed back to the basics for the XBLA version, eschewing many of the bells and whistles found in subsequent sequels (not to mention the god-awful 3D versions of the game; seriously, never mention them ever again).

Worms sees the player taking control of a team of four (who would have imagined it?) worms, armed to the teeth with bazookas, shotguns, exploding sheep, and a veritable arsenal of other weaponry, both zany and mundane.  Randomly spawning on a randomly generated map (randomly…), your task is to eliminate the enemy teams (the game can be played by up to four players or AIs) while trying not to be wiped out yourself.  Things are made more interesting by crates which randomly (there’s that word again) drop onto the battlefield, and which often contain super weapons like the much-feared Bananabomb; a super-bouncy, banana-shaped grenade which explodes into multiple, even more super-bouncy banana grenades, potentially wiping out a great deal of the enemy team and a fair chunk of the terrain as well.

Really, it’s hard to describe a Worms game without coming across as incredibly boring because, quite frankly, pretty much everyone has played or at least heard of the game (or something like it); it’s the pinnacle of a very old genre and it plays as brilliantly as pretty much every 2D version of Worms has (3D, really bad) because it basically is every other version of Worms ever made.

As mentioned previously, a lot of the features from later games in the series have been removed from the XBLA version; there is no map editor, for example, and many of the more esoteric weapons choices (such as the Holy Hand Grenade or Concrete Donkey) are no longer present.  This is both a blessing and a curse; the sheer variety found in games like Worms: World Party or Armageddon made them stayers for a long time, but by the same token it made it the whole experience much more convoluted and much less user friendly.  This version, though pared back, is complete enough that the game feels like ‘pure’ Worms, which isn’t a bad thing at all as the focus is put squarely back on the strategy.

This is one of those games which definitely falls into the ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ category; blasting away with the shotgun or flinging grenades can be picked up relatively quickly, but mastering the use of weapons affected by wind, or some of the more interesting capabilities of the ninja rope (for example) can take a far longer time; if nothing else, this additional challenge and learning curve gives the game a longevity that few other XBLA games can match.

Graphically the game is very simple, with small 2D sprites on a 2D landscape; everything looks very crisp and colourful, but it won’t exactly challenge the new Plasma TV you just bought.  Aurally the game is adequate, with some humorous voiceovers for the worms and big explosions and what not; nothing special, but not annoying either.

Worms has a lot in common with the XBLA version of Doom, in that both are old classics that most people would have played, but nonetheless are still a bit of fun.   Unlike Doom, however, Worms has far more longevity to it due to the depth of strategy on offer, the quickness of games, and the simple randomness (arrgh!) brought about through random(make it stop, please) levels and weapon drops.  Despite the fact that this series has been going for well over a decade now with few enough changes that every version is instantly familiar, the fact is that the XBLA version of Worms makes it so easy to just sit down and have a quick game against people from all over the world with the absolute minimum of fuss; how can you say no to that?          

     

Rating: 8/10

      

-Tim Sweeney

Carcassonne (XBLA) - Review

Board game remakes are a natural fit for the Xbox Live Arcade service; XBLA is all about the social experience, and simple multiplayer games allow players to talk to each other and have a relaxed game instead of worrying about having to shoot holes in things.  Plus, let’s face it, they’re probably dirt cheap to make, which I’m sure Microsoft and the gang see as a bonus.

Carcassonne is a great example of the whole online board game thing; based off a popular German game, this videogame version looks pretty much identical to what you’d play on the tabletop (barring the occasional animation) and apparently plays exactly the same as well.  The players (up to 4 offline, 5 online) are assigned random tiles, which can consist of roads, sections of town, grassland, etc.  The goal is to slowly build up the terrain, using the limited pieces at your disposal to take control of the cities, monasteries, and other parts of the land while similarly denying them to your opponents.

For a game which is determined almost entirely by chance through the randomised tile system, there is a remarkable amount of strategy involved in determining the outcome of a match.  As mentioned previously, you have a small amount of ‘people’ which you can place onto a tile to take control of it and any adjacent tiles which match; place one on a road, and the full length of the road is yours, as are cities or farmland.  Once placed, they are there until the road or city is completed; the strategy then comes from placing pieces intelligently so that they can be returned to your fold for future usage, as well as attempting to block your opponent’s attempts to retrieve their own pieces.

It’s fairly deep actually, but also quite relaxed; being turn-based and only getting to really do a single thing at a time, there’s plenty of incentive to have a chat to your opponents or enjoy the good old medieval style music which will have you rocking along in your seat…or not, more likely.

Carcassonne is a good little game to get if you like a more sedate, tactical experience when it comes to both your board games and online games; it’s doubtful that you’ll drop Call of Duty 4 to play more of it, but it can be enjoyable to just have a game and chill out every once in a while, even if the excitement level is somewhat lacking.          

     

Rating: 7.5/10

      

-Tim Sweeney