Worms, that perennial game of strategic destruction. For over a decade those little pink guys have been waging war amongst themselves for our entertainment. Now they’ve moved to the N-Gage with their particular brand of turn-based mayhem.

Worms World Party, from THQ Wireless, for N-Gage looks just like the Worms games should. Destructible 2D environments over stylized backgrounds. It’s exactly the kind of look we’ve come to expect from the Worms series over the years, just on a much smaller scale. That of course poses a problem. Looking about the level takes a lot of getting used to as you have to go to the menu, switch to the camera, move around the screen and then remember approximately how far the other worms are, what’s in the way etc. Not an ideal setup but obviously because of the limited screen space.

The game of course generally helps you out in this respect, if you call it help. It will simply pile most of the worms right next to each other. Not exactly help as one blast will do damage to multiple worms. It often seems like the game would rather put all the worms in one area than actually use the entire map, so then why are the maps to large?

The sound is also standard Worms sounds. Eventually I would get annoyed with the sounds and turn them down as the worms are extremely ’talkative’ and start to grate on your nerves after some time. But if you’re playing on the go it’s good because you don’t need the sound at all to enjoy the game.

Enjoying the game is often very difficult. With the small screen and the need to move the camera around all the time you will be often pressed for time to do something useful. You’ll probably miss as much as you hit also, but that’s only normal. The AI however will not. It will hit, and hit well every single time. I note this because after 12 matches the enemy worms had yet to miss. In the 13th match they did actually miss, twice.

The game does offer a wide range of weapons that the Worms series are known for over the years and include air strikes, bazookas, grenades and yes, even the sheep. It also offers online play via the N-Gage arena, but good luck trying to find a person to play against. The few times I checked there were no games available and only five other players listed. The game does offer 2 offline modes, quick match and custom where you select all the parameters for it. Quick game gives you zero options, not even a difficulty choice which probably explains why the AI almost automatically hits. Custom mode is for hot potato multiplayer and offers a CPU player option as well. Even on beginner mode the AI worms are very, very accurate.

The game isn’t really as much fun as I remember having with previous incarnations. Considering the AI never misses, or perhaps has a 99% hit ratio, you will most likely never win a match. I am playing my 16th now and am still winless. Take that and combine it with sometimes clunky controls and a lot of moving the camera back and forth and you have a recipe for a game that’s just not as good as it could be. The game would have scored far higher with me had it been fun and given the gamer a good chance to at least win a match.

The game is currently maintaing 4 out of 5 stars in user reviews at N-Gage. The game scored below that mark here at GDN.