The Worms are back...again, again, again, again,......

Genre: Strategy
Developer: Team 17
Publisher:

Remember Biology 101? Remember being forced to cut up a poor worm for study? While some of us finally could channelize their inherent sick behaviour by ritually slashing the poor creature, others became sick of the fact they were about to chop a living creature, how vile the thing itself might be.
Well, a few years back the worms came back with a license to kill. Forget the defenseless little squigly lifeforms. Armed to the bone with heavy duty weaponry, they got sickeningly violent and happily shot each other with any piece of hardware they could get they slimy hands on. Team 17, a small development team whose name probably originated from the popular '80ies band "East 17" (OK, getting older), brought this wormwar to the pc.

Now, Team 17 comes back with their pseudo-rambo worms in the latest incarnation of the Worms series: Worms World Party. The concept is kinda predictable, because Team 17 has already made Worms, Worms II and Worms Armageddon. The only new things are : some new maps and some new weapons. All the other things are the same as in Worms Armageddon.

The new weapons : A great amount of new weapons (btw, I'm being sarcastic) : two. First the Skunk Bomb, very amusing. The Skunk bomb is a funny little ape with a tambourine who is walking across the level. When you press your spacebar, the tambourines fly away and where they come down, there are huge explosions, quite funny. Another new weapon is the MB Bomb. A strange-looking bomb that is been carried along with the wind and when it falls, it explodes. This is a rather stupid weapon with a small chance of making a wormsplat.

The Worms Level Editor is the same as in the earlier editions of Worms. It is a simple concept which reminds me on Paintbrush from Windows 3.1 .You have some buttons to press on and when you make a button active, you can work with this tool. You'll get your map in black and white, choose a background, generate the map and you've got your map. Quite a good editor. Simple yet fast and effective.

Talking gameplay, the worms are still as funny as they used to be. One of the assets is that you can let your worms talk in almost every language or dialect. There are some languages as Dutch, German, English, but also Texan, Kamikaze, American with a Russian accent (cfr. Red Alert 2 : the Soviets),… . So that's quite nice. A new modus has appeared : The Fort Mode. This has been created so that both teams have their castle on each side of the map. Both teams should try to execute the opposite fort/worms.
It's still fun to let 2 teams with famous names battle each other. Britney Spears of team "Teen Dream" getting hammered with a rocket-launcher by Roseanne and Drew Carey from team "US Comedy Today". Beats Celebrity Deathmatch…trust me. It is a nice game, quite addictive too, but if you have already played Worms and Worms Armageddon, then Worms World Party is stating to get hackneyed.

EP sez:

Worms World Party is ill of the condition "DCAWF". Or, Don't Change A Winning Formula. It's still fun, but not only the concept remains, most of the graphics and stuff too… Please Team 17, buff up the Worms formula.

Pros and Cons

+ Fun
+ Fun
+ Voices
+ Did I mention Worms is still fun?
- DCAWF

Jeroen "Cheetah" Weckers/Erwin "Reaper" Husin
http://www.weckersweb.vze.com

Score

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 7.5
Sound & Music: 8.5
Addicitiviness: 8.5

Overall : 80.5%

Links

> Team 17
> Worms World Party Official Site