Worms Armageddon
You know Worms, right? Team 17’s invertebrate mascots hell – bent on the destruction of one another, their motives more mysterious than that of the American military?
Well, the trio of forays into three – dimensional territory (Worms 3D, Worms Forts: Under Siege, and Worms 4, all available for Xbox, Playstation 2 and PC) may have tainted your memory of the original. Their unrelenting shittiness may even have given you the impression that Worms, as a series, is no good. But, as those who have played the recent handheld versions will attest, this impression is mistaken. 2D Worms still delivers big on mindless explosions and multiplayer thrills with a design scheme which has gone through only the most minor of changes in its decade of existence.
For those of you foolish or stubborn enough to have missed out on Worms or Worms Armageddon, there is much to learn. Our scene opens on a randomly – generated, simplistic landscape to which the general laws of physics apply (Up is up, down is down, and the latter has priority unless you can break your fall with some scenery), with some notable exceptions. Things blow up with no regard to what they are made of – so a rock is as easy to break through as a tree trunk, which in turn has the same properties as a satellite dish – and everything which isn’t a player is treated as a single object, so that a ladder propped up against a tree will not fall over when shot at. It’s traditional turn – based action / strategy with a huge variety of ker-azy weaponry, and oil barrels, land mines and the like are thrown in for good measure. Got it? No, of course you don’t. It becomes intuitive when you begin to play it, though, so just get your hands on the game and stop wasting our time. Believe us, you won’t regret it.
Team 17 and Infogrames have done a commendable job of skipping daintily along the line of throwaway plaything and heart – capturing avatar with Worms. When Charlie uses his final few breaths to mutter “Oh dear” after being shot to pieces by your wriggly horde, only the coldest of hearts would fail to feel for him. But then he explodes, leaving behind only a modest gravestone, and it’s time to concentrate on finishing off his mates.
And why wouldn’t you? The game seems to have found the pinnacle realisation of man’s incessant desire to maim and destroy, and it lies in placing ridiculously overpowered weaponry in the hands of the most timid of God’s creatures. Suffice to say this wouldn’t work with humans – can you imagine anybody having gleeful childhood memories of sending a bad guy to his watery grave at the hands of a baseball bat? Well, of course you can, we’re talking about videogames after all, but can you imagine the BBFC letting all this pass under their noses?
In the end, it’s this balance between chaotic violence and hilarious irrelevance that makes Worms Armageddon an accomplished single player, and virtually unparalleled multiplayer experience, all these years later.
No comments:
Post a Comment