Worms
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| Worms (mobile)

During the Second World War, the top secret Project X-Ray was initiated by the Americans to invent unique and unpredictable forms of attack. One of its ideas was to use a swarm of bats with parachutes to drop napalm bombs onto the Japanese, and to set their cities alight.

Incredibly enough, the Americans never put this into practice. Yet 60 years on we're getting to control a strike force just as bizzare: a band of homicidal worms, armed with nothing but their bare wriggly bits – and just maybe the odd homing missile, stick of dynamite and banana bomb. These worms are just as deadly as killer bats, just as daft looking, and just as cute, right up until you see the soulless, possessed whites of their eyes…

In Worms, two to four teams of worms employ any means necessary to obliterate each other from the face of the Earth. You control one team, typically comprising of four wrigglers, and the computer or a chum takes charge of the other. It's then a straight slug-fest until one team is left standing; after the best of three rounds, a winner is declared. Whether by bazooka or cluster bomb, Holy bomb or Fire punch, you're guaranteed some gratuitous worm-on-worm action on the way to victory, along with a crazy brand of humour that's unique in the pocket gaming kingdom.

With options to adjust the design of the levels and even the types and the quantity of ammunition, Worms excels with some of the best presentation you'll find in a mobile game. The menus are beautifully simple, with bold colours straight out of a toddlers' sketchpad. True, the in-game graphics are unspectacular, but Worms doesn't claim to be a visual triumph. The focus is instead on a basic style of play that puts fun and addictiveness above all else, so any lack of in-game pretties is forgivable. With a jolly theme tune and brilliant sound effects for explosions and rockets, Worms really does provide everything necessary to become engrossed in the mass slaughter of little pink creatures.

There are really only minor gripes we have with Worms. Firstly, the use of the camera to view other opponents is fiddly, making the aiming of long-range weapons difficult. Once you've figured out where enemy worms are, the targeting is restricted to just the part of the screen you can see surrounding your currently controlled worm, meaning you cannot quickly gauge which direction or angle to fire. It's certainly a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things, but it will prove frustrating to new players who've yet to learn how to gauge the power of their shots. In addition, the button configuration you use to control Worms brings the star and hash keys into play. These can be tricky to reach, especially when time is ticking down and you're rushing things.

Worms will undoubtedly become a genuine classic mobile phone game, perhaps still remembered long after we've all been buried and composted by the aforementioned nematodes. No other game manages quite so successfully to make what is really a heavy-duty tactical war game into something accessible and inviting to everyone from your mum to your baby brother. And with its wide array of scenery and backdrops, together with the random positioning of your worms when you start a level, each game is a fresh challenge. In fact, it's quite possible you'll never play the same level twice.

Worms has the simplicity, the fun factor, the cutesy look, and the essential multiplayer mode to keep the war going on and on.

Worms

With all the hallmarks of a classic, Worms has much to offer those craving something different
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