I think we all have fond gaming memories - Geoff talks passionately about Ecco the Dolphin, Chris enjoys his Sonic from back in the retro days, and me, well, I loved Worms. 'Loved' being the operative word really, because the third dimension, though it isn't bad, doesn't cut it compared to the 2D, colour rich game that is Worms World Party. Of course, that's just my opinion, but I'm sure a lot of you would agree that swinging with your rope along the terrain, throwing holy-hand grenades across the land and barricading yourself in with girders is more priceless than priceless itself. [I'm with you there - my first experience with Worms on PC was a 6 hour all-nighter! Ah, great times… Nostalgic Ed].

Worms World Party was, and still is, a fantastic concept. Take your skill online and battle against other player's teams using any means necessary. The PC version of Worms World Party still thrives today, with plenty of players online - will the N-Gage version measure up?

Well, almost everything in this game is true to the original, with only a few alterations here and there, to compensate for the fact that you're playing it on a phone. First of all, the controls are mapped perfectly onto the N-Gage, with the zero key acting as a free camera mode once pressed and held. Most of the missions are here, some are missing, but the single player still consists of doing something specific in an allotted time frame. Hold your horses! In all this excitement, I'm getting ahead of myself. The golden question that needs to be answered, for the minority who have lived under a rock for the past decade - what's Worms World Party all about?

The core gameplay of Worms World Party lies in fun and hectic battles between teams of worms, on a fully destructible 2D terrain. Worms have to collect, select and use artillery and utilities from a large array of weaponry on a convenient menu, ranging from dynamite to cluster grenades, banana bombs to concrete donkey air strikes and low gravity powers to the good old fashioned ninja rope, used for clinging onto anything and swinging along - pure, fast travel in style. The whole game revolves around turn-based action; your worm is selected, then you move it and use a weapon before your time runs out. Then the next player gets a turn, be it your friend, your online foe, or one of the poor AI teams, the choice is yours.

So now you know the concept, what makes this game so damn appealing on the N-Gage? Well, here's how it happens. There's a mixed group of four, sat around a table - could be at school, could be in a bar, restaurant, party, wherever. Bored? Well, whip out the old N-Gage, power Worms up, select four human teams and presto! Just pass the N-Gage around the table, each taking a human team to battle, four of you instantly relieved from all boredom. In fact, let's stick a bowl of potato chips in the middle of the table, put some music on, kick back and just pass that sleek game deck around, with fun and rivalry in the air.

Because the concept of Worms is so simple and the multiplayer so assessable, this suddenly becomes a hip game for both genders. "Hey baby, want a game of Worms?" providing you can say that with a straight face and quickly follow it up by unzipping your pocket and flicking out the game deck, then I'm sure you'll land yourself a game, no problem! Pass it around; let them all have a go!

But let's pretend you don't have access to friends so easily, what other options are there? Well you can play against the AI, which is ideal to kill a good twenty minutes against what I like to call crash test dummies. Basically, the AI, regardless of how easy or hard they are, are extremely stubborn and only use boring weapons such as grenades, bazooka and if they are feeling dangerous - the shotgun! Out of all the things I blessed the teams with - homing pigeons, flying sheep, the lot - they only use the underpowered weapons. Granted, as the difficulty increases, the AI can pull some one hundred percent accurate bazooka shots, using the wind to their utmost advantage, but I want to see some carnage and I want some type of challenge; I don't want to be insulted by a grenade!

The last option, most expensive but probably the most enjoyable, has to be the N-Gage arena, basically online play in your hands. Here you can play owners of the game around the globe using GPRS Internet on your N-Gage. This costs money but it's the quickest way to get playing with somebody like yourself who isn't afraid to take risks and throw something other than a grenade!

There's a single player mode where you're briefed before embarking on a short but extremely difficult task. Getting it right takes a couple of attempts but the experience is rewarding once you've sussed out a route and taken appropriate action. There's a decent training mode here too, very similar to the PC version, going through all the basics and some of the advanced courses about throwing weapons, shooting weapons, jumping, roping and a whole bunch of other stuff you should cover before going online. Lastly, when playing any type of normal game, online, with friends or against AI, you can configure the game to your liking, using Wormpot. This allows you to select three variants to be applied in game, such as 'no falling damage', 'super rope' and 'crates galore,' a mode that drops dozens of crates for you to pick up.

Like an eager kid on Christmas morn, I rushed to the team creation section, hoping that I'd be able to record my own voice bank, phrases my worms could use for different occasions. I had done it on the PC version, using my microphone and a sound recorder, but I was hoping that Team 17 might have included it in the N-Gage version, with the game deck doubling up as a phone and all! Unfortunately it wasn't here, so I was forced to pick some of the other attractive, pre-recorded sound banks, which are good in their own right - I just wanted the novelty of my own voice!

This lands me nicely onto the sound department, which I have absolutely no complaints about - apart from the fact that it's disturbingly loud, even on quiet mode! The music in the game and in menus is crisp and clear, sounding fantastic. The music here will definitely provoke memories for fans of the series. The worms' voices are loud and very funny, especially when you select the Jamaican voice bank, with comical phrases for every instance. If you're wondering what to do next, your worms will say "wake me when you're through" through sounding like true Jamaicans! That always makes me smile! The familiar noises for all the weapons are here too, sounding as good as their PC counterparts. All the effects are very loud, which makes this game impossible to play on a quiet, loaded bus or train, unless you are wearing headphones or you have all sound switched off, which doesn't seem right at all! But apart from that, the sound gets a well-deserved thumbs up!

The graphics are good, if a little grainy in places. All these years I have been used to a nice big colour-rich monitor and going to a small 4000-colour screen has some drawbacks. Sometimes the worms don't quite look that shade of pink they always were and other times the terrains look a little dated, which is not how it's supposed to be. With that aside, we have a nice 2D cartoon styled graphic engine, with good effects for devastating weapons, but not looking just as good as I'm used to on the PC.

Worms World Party for the N-Gage is hard to score. It's a perfect fun title for many people, those who have friends to share the experience with, or can get their game deck online - but people who plan to play the game alone might be a little disappointed with the poor AI. If your friends have an additional N-Gage with WWP then you'll be able to have a Blue Tooth system link match, so there's no need for passing round - another bonus if you have friends and another point to the lasting appeal. Worms World Party will always be one of my favourite games; it's a fantastic novelty to play it on the go, just by conveniently pressing that game button on your phone with your worm-like finger. Worms World Party is undiluted fun - for a better taste, just add friends, stir and serve.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).