I’ve been a huge Worms fan since the early days of the series on the PS1. For those uninitiated, Worms answers the age old question: What if you armed worms to the teeth and let them loose? The answer to that is an extremely fun and surprisingly strategic multiplayer romp.

This isn’t the first Worms to grace Xbox Live, since Team17 released the original Worms before. But they’ve certainly learned a lot from that first outing as Worms 2: Armageddon is arguably the best Worms ever. What you’ve got for 800 MS Points is one of the best party games on or offline that’s currently available for the XBLA (that’s not a FPS of some kind. 

Worms 2: Armageddon is a turn based strategy game where you control a team of worms that are armed to the teeth and are tasked with destroying the opposing teams. You can have a total of four teams, which could controlled over Xbox Live or local friends. This is a big deal because local multiplayer has been so lacking as of late and it’s great to see Team17 incorporate this into Worms 2.

Each player takes turns moving their team of worms and each worm starts out with a regular assortment of weapons with the more specialized weapons being available through air drops or power-ups. Wind speed, direction, and weapon distance all comes into play during your turn. Different weapons will have different effects and if there is one shortcoming with Worms 2, it’s that there isn’t a really simply way to see tell what each weapon does.

The controls are simple and the HUD is easy to read. With Worms 2, Team17 spruced up all the graphics for the series and this is possibly the best looking Worms game ever. And for veterans of the series, you’ll be glad to see the vertical levels from the DS version incorporated into this release. Certain weapons have also been updated so their effects are slightly different but I won’t ruin the surprise for you!

Worms 2: Armageddon is a lot of fun and has a very gentle learning curve so anyone can enjoy. For 800 MS Points, you would be hard pressed to find a better value for a fun multiplayer experience. Sadly, Team17 wasn’t able to do a simultaneous release for the PSN but an iPhone has already been released and reviewed. Hopefully our PlayStation brothers won’t be left in the cold for much longer!