XBLA review: Worms (4/10)

So the Worms franchise came to the 360 a while back. If you're not familiar with it, Worms is a turn-based strategy series where you command a group of, well, worms against one or more opposing groups, using move-and-attack rules. The environment is destructible, so if you can't get to an enemy directly, you can blast your way through, and the water level rises at the end of every set of turns (water kills these worms).

Worms for the 360 is unimpressive. As the single-player challenges progress in difficulty, the computer makes fewer and fewer mistakes, to the point where it makes a perfect move nearly every time. That wouldn't be such a bad thing, except that Worms has several features that work against it:

• Worms has no undo feature. Make a mistake, you're done. That can increase the frustration level a bit, especially if you're most of the way through the challenge.
• A single pixel remaining from a blast can block your path or trigger a bazooka explosion, which can lead to the problem above: making a single mistake and not being able to undo it.
• Some weapons are inexplicably unavailable in certain rounds: for example, you might have an Air Strike that you can never use.
• Rounds are timed, so while you're trying to figure out why you can't get past that mysterious pixel, the clock is ticking.

It has the usual accumulation achievements with no method of tracking your progress, and with the lack of quality in the game, you likely won't have the persistence to get them.

Worms might be worth a try if you know somebody who has it, but I can't recommend this game.

zlionsfan's rating: 4 annelids out of 10.