Ever since I played Worms on the Mega Drive I have always owned at least one copy for every console I’ve owned. It was the party game back in the day, but how does it cope in the latest version for the teeny-screened PSP?

The Worms series has never really advanced that far from the original, but here that’s a good thing. Following from the softer, brighter cartoony visuals of the series Armageddon-onwards WOW2 has a bright, colourful presentation that has an element of dark humour in it too - both kids and adults will like the look.

Team 17 pretty much took the ‘if it aint broke’ approach and anyone who’s played a Worms game before will pick it up almost instantly. The controls are simply mapped to the PSP and are very intuitive. The use of the analogue stick to free-move the camera definitely was a smart option. The mainstay of the game is still the four-on-four battles across obstacle-ridden battlefields, but WOW2 has included a few other game modes that shake things up a bit.

The single player campaign has you fight across 6 eras of war, from pirates through WWI and II to space-age. You fight a number of enemies in set situations which aren’t necessarily straight battles; your worms will have half-depleted health, or the landscape will already have huge craters which you have to climb out of, or you’ll only have limited weapons to make use of. When you get to the end of each stage you fight a ‘boss’ worm. This is essentially just a worm with more health than the previous ones and is rarely a straight out fight, you’ll have to cross obstacles to get to them or go across the map to get the weapons you need. Although there are some nice touches you only use a few weapons and you can breeze through this part of the SP campaign quite quickly.

On to the puzzle mode. In these missions you do not necessarily have to kill opposing worms to win, or even take it in turns when you do - some of the missions play more like a platform game than the shoot ‘em up you’re used to with Worms. These are quite hit and miss as some can be great fun but others (especially the low-grav platform mission) are just tedious as they take so bloody long and then you fall off right at the end!

When you play the normal 4v4 single match games the game does add a few interesting additions that make the gameplay a whole lot more interesting. As well as airdrops of weapons, items and health there are also other random intervening events. These range from Earthquakes to Airstrikes and can really turn the tide of battle.

The problems with the AI make things a little inconsistent and unrewarding and it would have been nice if we could have found someone to play against on the servers via Wifi. But there’s enough charm and fun to be had in the same old way that you can’t help but chuckle when you prod a helpless worm onto a mine and then into the sea…