Worms: A Space Oddity
Like the good old days, but bad.
Control issues
Perhaps they were forced to give the weapons fluffier names to please Nintendo and/or secure the game's 7+ PEGI rating. But it's unlikely that's also the reason there's such a limited range of weapons. Why no Holy Hand Grenade or Ming vase? Not even a super sheep or banana bomb? Not to mention the fact there's no bungee rope, which makes getting around levels much more difficult.
To make matters worse, the control system makes the weapons a chore to use. The pointer sticks to the edge of the screen if you're more than a metre and a half away from the telly. It jerks around on menu screens. Scrolling around landscapes, done by holding + and moving the remote around, is a slow and awkward process.
You move worms and aim using the d-pad. Selecting weapon power is done by moving the remote up or down and pressing B to lock. Then you flick the remote forward and release B to fire. It works okay, but it all feels fiddly, unnecessary and ultimately tedious.
A Wii game just wouldn't be a Wii game without a bunch of poor-to-middling mini-games, and there are six included here. They involve doing things like twisting the remote to pilot a spaceship through a cavern, or using it to control worms wearing rocket packs. They're all available in multiplayer but first you must unlock them in story mode, which involves playing through dozens of extremely boring single-player levels. None of the mini-games are worth the effort.
There's no online multiplayer mode, which has caused complaints (you can read some of them, plus a response from Team 17, in one of our comments threads). I couldn't care less. For me, most of the fun of Worms has always been being in the same room as your opponent, trading insults, laughing at them, pushing them off piano stools et cetera. I can see why this might be a dealbreaker for some people, but there are plenty of other factors worth smashing the deal to bits for.
Take the price. Like Worms on Xbox Live Arcade, Worms: A Space Oddity is a 2D strategy game with visuals and gameplay that haven't changed in ten years. The former has the added bonus of online play, if you like that sort of thing, and costs GBP 6.80. The latter has no online play, a poorer control system and worse graphics. It carries an RRP of 39.99.
It's one thing to churn out the same game ten years after it was made. It's another to churn out an inferior version and charge people full whack for it. Even when you take into account the online discounts possible at Amazon or Play, Worms: A Space Oddity is less enjoyable than the Worms game I was playing ten years ago, and the Worms game you can buy on XBLA for a fraction of the price. "Mr Future Man," I'd say, "You can keep your new fangled motion-sensing controllers and your console the size of a DVDA, or whatever it was. Sounds like we're better off sticking with Worms 2. I'll have the telly though."