Worms: Open Warfare

Moby ID: 21873
Nintendo DS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Worms: Open Warfare isn't a follow-up to the Worms series, but rather a new version made specifically for contemporary handheld consoles. Instead of keeping on with the 3D style of Worms 3D and Worms 4: Mayhem, the game goes back to its roots, featuring the classical 2D gameplay and smaller weapon set from the first Worms games.

Each player has a team of worms that has to battle it out against opponent teams in a destructible terrain, with several wacky weapons at their disposal, similar to artillery games. The player can either opt for the single-player mode, competing in custom matches or setting challenges against computer teams; or play against human opponents in hotswap or multiplayer modes. The DS version features single cartridge multiplayer and the PSP version features wireless Ad-Hoc functionality.

Spellings

  • Worms: Открытая война - Russian spelling

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Credits (Nintendo DS version)

94 People (86 developers, 8 thanks) · View all

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Additional Programmers
Additional Art
Lead Artist
Artists
Animation
Design
Music and SoundFX
Credits Music
Producer
Production Assistant
Testing
Project Manager
Head of Product Development, Europe
Creative Director
Art Director
Executive VP Worldwide Studios
Senior Vice President Business Development
Executive Vice President Worldwide Publishing
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 67% (based on 25 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 7 ratings with 1 reviews)

To the roots

The Good
There are not much people who liked more the Worms 3D games than the 2D ones, and that's one of the best things of Worms: Open Warfare. The game comes back to its roots, featuring a game with much better graphics than the first one of the series but with the same weapons and limitations.

Worms was an unique game perfect to be played against many other players. Worms 2 improved the experience with better graphics and then arrived the best of them all, Worms: Armageddon, with a lot of weapons and options to customize your play. After that, the game jumped in the 3D games, which gave many different problems, specially the annoying gameplay in 3D environment. The evolution was bad for the series, with different games in 3D that never succeed. That's why there's a positive feeling when we start playing this Worms: Open Warfare. The bazooka is now as funny as always!

The multiplayer mode works fine (it needs a lot of time to load), but you can play the game alone against the CPU. Of course you can customize your teams, selecting your language and your graves, and there are many teams to be customized. Once you've done with that you can start playing against the computer in a quick battle or customize the options for it. You can also play the challenge mode, in which you'll have to fight against the computer in many different stages while the difficulty increases.

The Bad
There are not much weapons available. You have all the weapons from Worms 1, which are a lot, but when you've played other Worms games and you've seen funny weapons like the Holy Hand Grenade or the Donkey you'll really miss them.

It's not just that the weapons available are not enough, the problem is that most of them are out of balance. A cluster bomb exploded in front of a worm will take less damage than a single fire punch, so, cluster bombs are useless. There are many other things like that about weapons in the game, and you can't change the damage of each weapon as you could in other Worms games.

AI of your enemies is sometimes ridiculous. Well, we've been noticing it since the first Worms. If there's a worm of our team next to another of a different team, the AI will attack him, no matter if a member of the team is damaged. That's not bad at all, a bit annoying but nothing more, but the main problem of AI appears when it doesn't know what to do, and he will spend its time thinking with a big "?". You'll have to wait 'till the turn of your enemy ends, and that's something bad because it slows the game a lot.

Gameplay is not as good as other Worms games. You have different jumps which are useful, and using the ninja rope is still fun, but I've noticed many problems with the stages, specially with the big green oil tanks in there. It's really easy to get stocked when you're near (and some other things in the stage) and then you can't move or aim to wherever you want.

When you've completed all the different challenges of the game, you'll have just a screen saying "try the next one", but there's no next one, so, there's no ending, not even a "congratulations title" or something like that.

Customization of everything is a bit limited. There are not much different graves to choose, and you can't choose different voices for your worms, just your language. There are only 4 worms for each team and you can't select the power of the weapons, just the ammo of each one.

The Bottom Line
The best thing of this game is the coming back to the 2D, which is maybe just because of the possibilities of the system. A nice revival of one of the most original and unique games developed. A perfect game to be played against other players, with some highs and many lows in the single player mode, but with the essence of the original. Not a must have for sure, but a good game to spend a good time specially when you're not playing alone.

Nintendo DS · by NeoJ (398) · 2010

Trivia

Cutscenes

The videos inside the game are actually remade sequences from the first two Worms games, made with the new graphical style.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by SupSuper.

Additional contributors: Sciere, Stratege, Plok.

Game added April 3, 2006. Last modified October 9, 2023.