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Worms is a fancy version of a very old game concept, one that a lot of players probably first encountered on something like the Apple II. In those old shareware games (as well as the fairly famous Scorched Earth later on), two players took up residence on either side of a hill, each with a little cannon at their disposal. The two players would take turns trying to guess what trajectory would drop a shell smack on top of the other guy, and whoever guessed right was the winner.

Back in the olden days of the Amiga and similar platforms, Team 17 mashed up that basic idea with elements of Lemmings to create a turn-based action-strategy game. Instead of a single cannon, you had a team of cartoon worms. Those worms in turn had guns, bombs, jet-packs, and other handy bits of equipment. The ultimate goal – blow up the other guys – remained more or less the same.

Space Oddity, the first Worms for Nintendo’s Wii console, has a different visual theme and a lot of different weapons and widgets on offer. Players coming back to the series after a while may have a little trouble adapting to all the new toys (and the lack of some items that they relied on in Worms past). It’s still Worms, though, in the fine old 2D style. If you liked Worms before, you’ll probably like this one as well.

Worms…In…Space

Moving around in Worms for the Wii is relatively simple, so long as there’s not a jetpack involved. Firing most of the weapons brings the Wiimote into play, though – swinging it back and flicking it forward to charge up and shoot, for instance. This takes some getting used to, especially since Worms has always been a game of inches (or whatever the pixel equivalent might be). The game offers plenty of help learning the different moves, though, as well as an option to re-try a shot until you get it right. Once you and your friends are good enough, of course, you can turn off the mulligan option and play for keeps.

Some of this game’s new weapons are simply sci-fi versions of old ones. The Blaster, for instance, which fires a barrage of several low-power shots, is much the same as the Uzi from the original Worms. Veteran worm-warriors will also be pleased to know that the exploding sheep is back (although technically he’s now an exploding robo-sheep).

Others are similar, but not quite the same. The new UFO is a lot like the old air-strike, flying over an opponent to strafe them with missiles. There’s also another variety of aerial attack, the Dropship, which embodies truth in advertising. It’s a ship, and it drops straight down to squash whatever target it lands on.

Space Oddity isn’t as heavy on special movement gadgets as the older games, though. There’s still an all-purpose teleporter, which is appropriate given the setting, but the infamous ninja rope is gone, replaced by a rocket pack that demands a little less finesse from players who want to take to the air. The suite of “engineering” tools is pretty different, too – items that let you muck around with the structure of the level – and it doesn’t seem quite as versatile as it used to be.

Worms Away

The multiplayer mode supports two to four players, but only if those players can get together face-to-face. While Space Oddity was going to support network play at one point, that was scrapped somewhere along the line.

Its developers claim that the game’s more fun when you can chat with your opponents in person, and that’s obviously true. Nonetheless it’s too bad that you’re stuck playing against the computer when you’re home alone. Players short of Wiimotes will be pleased to know that they only need one for a multiplayer match, though – since it’s a turn-based game, you simply pass the controller to the next player once your turn is over. There’s also a “Forts” gameplay mode that gives versus matches a little more structure than the usual free-for-all.

Space Oddity features the kind of customization options that Worms: Open Warfare on the PSP introduced. That means you can dress up your team’s worms in silly outfits, and more importantly, design and save your own custom multiplayer levels. Six mini-games round out the collection of extras, each built on some weird way of manipulating the Wiimote. There’s a nifty riff on Solar Jetman to start with, powered by tilting and twisting the controller, and the rest of the concepts are similarly clever.

Down In The Hole

Despite those nifty extras, Space Oddity is not quite so dense a package as some of the other Worms games available these days. It doesn’t have as many weapons and items as Open Warfare, for instance, and other games have expanded the size of their battles to four-on-four or even five-on-five. Space Oddity sticks to smaller-scale matches with only three worms on a side.

It’s also not cheap – the Wii game comes in at a regular $50 price tag, compared to $30 for Open Warfare on the PSP and DS, or a mere $10 for the downloadable Worms on Xbox Live Arcade. If a Wii’s not your only gaming platform, you might want to shop around before buying this particular version. This is not going to be everybody’s perfect Worms, but the odd controls and odder mini-games definitely set it apart from the rest of the series. As the subtitle suggests, Space Oddity is unique.

Review by: D.F. Smith