Forget HG Wells, it's The War of the Worms you should be indulging in.
Matthew Pierce

"I've got Worms."
"Yeah? I've got Worms 2!" Aha ha ha.
Oh, how weak puns on Team 17's first two Worms games made us PC-owners laugh long into the night. But, as we approach the potential catastrophe that is the Millennium, what better way to embrace the grim possibilities of air traffic control disasters, warring religious groups and global stock market crashes than with Worms Armageddon.

Truth is, the PlayStation was never graced with the second Worms game, meaning that Armageddon presents much more of a perceived leap in quality than the six-month-old PC version ever offered. The undisputed master of the turn-based ensemble game, each of the Worms series has revolved around a simple but hugely addictive premise: hand pick a team of worms, then take it in turns to use your vast inventory of weapons and objects to shoot, blow up, push, punch or squash the enemy annelids.

From simple ideas great games are made, and none proves the adage more deftly than this. Bolting a single-player game onto the (AI-improved) multiplayer shenanigans increases its already admirable appeal and longevity twofold. Training missions, requiring you to perform shooting feats of pin-point accuracy against a strict time limit, teach you the basics. From then on, the missions offer a variety of ingenious indoor and outdoor scenarios with differing rules and cunningly limited arsenals for each. New jumping moves, careful positioning of defensive measures like girders, and tunnelling manoeuvres also have to be perfected in order to best utilise the relative safety of the craggy landscapes.