Worms: A Space Oddity (Wii)

Because sheep grenades are still funny.
4/8/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

I thought I knew what to expect when I first played Worms: A Space Oddity for the Wii. Take a team of worms, throw in some serious (and not-so-serious) firepower, add an opposing team of similarly homicidal worms, and let nature take its course, right? Well, sort of. There are still worms that need killin', and still plenty of weaponry with which to do it, but unlike most other Worms games, Space Oddity is designed to be a primarily solo experience, just you against the computer. It's lonely out in space.

The Worms are out for a cruise around the cosmos when technical difficulties leave them stranded far from home. The bulk of Space Oddity's gameplay is the Story Mode, which sends you to six different planets to retrieve bits of your broken spaceship, which are naturally being guarded by hostile alien worms. Each world has a number of different scenarios to defeat before you can gather up your goods and head off to the next planet, but they pretty much all boil down to the same thing: Be the last worm standing. Sitting. Slithering. Whatever it is worms do.

The combat takes place in the cartoony 2-D environments for which Worms is known, with each planet providing its own assortment of environmental hazards. Now that the worms are in space, you'll have to consider gravity as well as wind when judging your jumps and the trajectory of your shots. The weapons have gotten a sci-fi overhaul, too, so instead of shotguns and Uzis, you'll be waging war with impact frags, blasters, guided missiles and robo sheep. You have just 60 seconds per turn to plan and execute your move, including wriggling your worm into position, selecting your weapon, and firing.

The point-and-click controls of the past have been Wii-ified, and for the most part work quite well. To toss a grenade, for example, you aim with the d-pad, tilt the Wii remote up to increase power, then swing it down to fire. It takes a few rounds to get a feel for how much power you need to give your grenade just the right amount of English, but once you get the hang of it, you can deal damage with remarkable finesse. The Wii remote's pointing abilities are also put to good use. Selecting a weapon is a simple as hitting the minus button, then pointing at your chosen death-dealer; to use a guided missile or the UFO, just point at what you want blasted, and it's dust.

Assuming you can see it, that is. Although the camera controls are quite simple -- hold down the plus button and point at what you want to see -- they are so incredibly twitchy that you'll almost always overshoot your intended target. Tapping the plus button will cycle through three views that pull further and further back from the action, but if you're aiming for a worm on the opposite end of the playing field, you're almost always going to have to adjust the view manually. Wrestling with the camera while precious seconds tick away is not a recipe for joy, I assure you.

Working your way through the planets of the Story Mode unlocks six mini-games that are fun in a browser-game kind of way. In one, you must pilot a ship through a cavern, steering clear of not only the walls but also mines and alien ships. In another, you dodge snowballs as you race across the frozen tundra in your sled. They're not particularly memorable, but they're not terrible, either, and unlike most mini-games, they're entertaining even if you're playing by yourself.