Up this week, we’ve got one of the newest arcade titles, Worms 2: Armageddon. Released on July 1st, it is rated E10+ by the ESRB and is available in the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MS Points.

Product Overview:

Ten years after Worms™ Armageddon and the turn-based style of destruction and mayhem continues! Worms™ 2: Armageddon comes with the great cartoony style that we all know and love. Also packed with four player online and offline multiplayer, voice support, a boatload of new weapons (including the return of some iconic weapons from the past), all-new high-definition landscape themes, new play modes, hats, skins, speech-banks, loads of other customization and to top it all off, a highly-involving single player experience with tutorials, deathmatches, races, fort games, and puzzles. It’s a package as high on fun as it is destruction!

Keep reading for the rest of the review!

Product Features:

Some of the features of this title are the high definition, widescreen artwork based on the original Armageddon artwork. Reworked audio-visuals throughout, including all new sound-fx. Fire! Persistent fire eats and burns away the landscape. Crazy Crates! Start with basic weapons and shop as you go! Fort Mode! Start teams on your own bases. Rope Racing mode. Massively enhanced & improved game physics & laugh out loud reactions. Speedier, more direct gameplay. Speak your mind! Massive variety of comedy voice sets with many all new. All new crazy achievements. All new extensive customization, Worm Hats, voices, graves, dances, colors, forts! Uses NXE Avatars to reflect game status in game! All new Single Player adventure combines death matches and puzzles. Win tokens in the all-new 30 chapter single player campaign to win prizes in the game SHOP, unlock new landscapes, voices, hats and more. Enhanced CPU AI for more challenging single player games. Improved online handling, including host migration for network play. All new leaderboards and leaderboard objectives.

Controls:

The controls of Worms 2: Armageddon are easily learned. You can use the left thumbstick or the D-pad to control the movement of your worm and the angle of your selected weapon’s shot. The right thumbstick controls camera movement so you can move the camera around for a better view of the battlefield. The triggers (and bumpers) are used to zoom in and out, the left trigger (left bumper) lets you zoom in while the right trigger (right bumper) allows you to zoom out. As for the other buttons, the X button makes your worm jump forward with one press, while two presses make your worm do a back flip, allowing access to higher ground. The A button allows you to shoot your selected weapon (while using certain weapons the longer you hold down the A button controls the amount of power behind the shot). The B button brings up the weapon select screen, and the Y button has no function.

Single Player:

I enjoyed playing the campaign, which is 35 missions long with the first 19 being fairly easy. Starting with mission 20 the game started to challenge me (actually I’m stuck on mission 25). The AI in most of the missions are either army rejects that had no aim and got lucky, or the top of the line sharpshooters that can hit their target every time. The teams of poor marksmen were easy to defeat quickly, while the team of sharpshooters can get annoying pretty fast. Most of the missions are standard team deathmatch with your team against an opposing team, and the team with the last man (worm) standing is the winning team. Then the rest of the missions are puzzle missions, where you have to use items such as the ninja rope, jetpack, girders, electromagnets, and super sheep to get to a goal or to achieve a certain task.

Multiplayer:

I’d have to say that Worms 2 is my new favorite multiplayer arcade game, supporting local network play and online play via Xbox Live with up to 4 teams. The multiplayer game types include 3 difficulties of team Deathmatch (Beginner, Standard, and Pro), Rope Racing (Using the ninja rope to get from a starting point to an end point), Fort (Your team starts on one island and the opposing team start on an island across from you), and Crazy Crates (Team Deathmatch with the health, tool, and weapons crates falling at the beginning of every round).

The local play is fun, especially if you don’t explain the gameplay to your buddies before hand =P. The game also supports online play for whenever you get tired of the single player campaign, but one thing about online play that annoyed me is that it can take a few minutes before you find someone to play with. I’m not sure if this was due to the matchmaking system or the quantity of players. Other than that, the online play is great.

Graphics:
Graphically, Worms 2: Armageddon is much greater than its predecessor. Team17 has provided us with backgrounds that are great, with a cell-shaded appearance pasted behind the much more animated and livelier-looking worms. The explosions from your grenades or rockets are great. But, with great graphics comes slower processing, which results in a couple of seconds waiting in between turns. I still applaud the developer for being able to keep the cartoon-ish style of Worms, which help make it stand out in the Xbox LIVE arcade.

Options:

The Help & options menu includes several options:

• How To Play (a collection of instructions explaining various game types and weapons)
• Customize (which allows you to customize the look and sound of your team, and the option to create or edit game types)
• Controls (the button controls which I explained above),
• Audio (change the volume of the Music and Effects)
• Credits
• Language (in case you don’t speak English, there are 10 others to choose from)
• Save

The game also includes a Leaderboards option and an Achievements option right on startup.

Pros:

• Fun and challenging Single Player campaign.
• Sweet customization system
• Easy to learn controls

Cons:
• I find 35 missions a bit on the short side for a single player campaign
• The AI teams that are able to hit you on every turn can take away from the enjoyment (I like to call these guys the sharpshooters)
• The fact that not that many people are playing on Live

RATINGS:

Single Player: 9/10

Multi Player: 8/10 (Could be higher if there were more people playing)