Worms Armageddon N64 Review

[Anthony]

Heyguys! After much ado I've gotten around to my first review of a game that will actually run on my crappy i3 laptop (to be fair it has been a true soldier, surviving more wine than a laptop can reasonably be expected to survive). I have finally gotten Minecraft to run but it's the Windows 10 version, and I'm still deciding whether it's a good thing... The Java version lags like fuck, to the point of being unplayable, but I really miss the mod support and customized world creation.

However, this review is not about Minecraft. I'm still exploring the W 10 version and will be presenting my findings in an upcoming post. This review is Worms. I fondly remember playing this gem on our Pentium I 75Mhz machine back when I was still in primary school. I distinctly remember saying to my brother that there's no way we'll ever fill up the 2GB hard drive that it came with. We never did. This was 20 years ago.

In 25 years of gaming I have yet to experience greater joy in scoring a kill than lobbing a perfectly angled holy hand grenade onto an unsuspecting invertebrate. Super sheep kills are fun too... As are flamers... And Uzi's...

For anyone that has never experienced the joy of Worms, the objective is killing the other team, in glorious turn based and timed carnage.

The idea behind the game is straightforward: Your team of intrepid invertebrates must kill the opposing team(s) using whatever means necessary before they can kill you. At your disposal you have an arsenal of weird and wacky weapons that can be used in all sorts of creative ways. Want to bungee jump off a ledge and drop a stick of dynamite on your foe's head? You can. Homing missiles? Of course. Airstrikes? Yes, they're in there. Exploding sheep? Oh yes. Skunk bombs? You betcha!

Training - This lets you practice things like grenade skills or rope swings and is probably a good idea if you haven't played Worms in a while. Things like bazooka rounds are affected by the wind so it is possible to shoot around corners with a bit of skill. You also have to pass increasingly tough training courses to be able to attempt missions.

Missions - Think of these as scenarios. Your crack team of worm commandos have to complete objectives within a certain time limit. Usually you have to play smart. It's not just the glorious violence free for all that a quick or deathmatch game is.

The terrain is destructible which adds to the tactical gameplay required to win. The barrels you see there can also be hit for a big explosion and napalm all over the place. There are also mines that blow up if a worm gets too close. The mines are on a timer though, so a worm on a ninja rope can rappel down, activate it, and then get out of the way quickly for a free explosion that might hit an enemy or clear away some terrain that might be in the way.

The ways to cause carnage are only limited by your imagination.

Oh - just be careful of friendly fire... Your comrades are just as vulnerable to a stray rocket as your foes!

The Worms experience is also quite customizable. You can change anything from the types of weapons that are available in a match, their strengths, to the turn timer, to the kinds of airdrops that happen.

You can obviously also customize your team, the names of the individual worms, your team flag and the language that they speak on the battlefield. Team 17 has really gone out of their way to have a huge selection of languages to choose from. There's even an Afrikaans pack. Hearing your worm say ,"Speelgoed" when a weapons crate drops, or, "O heng" when a shot goes wild is quite something.

My final verdict? Worms Armageddon is fun to play. I'm not going to get addicted to it like I did with Minecraft and Fallout, but it's a good way to kill a few minutes or hours if you're in the mood for some lighthearted senseless violence. The controls are simple, but it's possible to execute some complicated maneuvers to deliver death to your enemies. The graphics are what you'd expect from a game that's almost 20 years old, but they do the job.

Hah, loved your stuff! Would be cool to see more like this, makes me look at an old game from a new perspective.

I've actually been doing some "historical" gaming posts lately, covering noteworthy games released in certain years (last one was 1998), makes me remember how much cool stuff is there to revisit

Thanks man. I'll definitely be doing more of these. Keep an eye out for Railroad Tycoon II as well as Harpoon and Command coming up soon! Just because the games are 20 odd years old doesn't mean they're not awesome!

Oh, man. I love this game. The first place I lived after moving away from my parents, my roommate and I used to spend countless hours chucking holy handgrenades at each other. It's a classic for sure.

Even more unique is the fact that every level is above a body of water, and worms cannot swim. This means instant death if a Worm falls too deep into water. This makes Worms similar to the Smash Bros series in that knocking your opponent out of bounds is often just as or more efficient than draining their HP. One will often need to take advantage of both the terrain, the trajectory of their weapons, the distance that an attack will send the worm flying, the placement of land mines and explosive crates, and even the spot that a worm dies in because they explode when their HP reaches zero. As matches go on, you will destroy more and more of the landscape, which means both you and your enemies get clearer shots, and if you take too long, the water levels will start rising.

So, it sounds like there are a lot of strategic elements to Worms, but Worms: Reloaded fails in the implementation of these mechanics. Worms: Reloaded is clearly a multiplayer focused title, but I was unable to find a match online so this game can only really be played cooperatively the old fashioned way. Thankfully, the console versions (PS3/Xbox 360) do feature offline multiplayer (and it is really sad that I actually have to make note of when a game has that these days) and you only need one controller since it is turn based; so if you are looking for a game to play with friends, Worms: Reloaded could possibly work. Unfortunately, I am only able to review it as a single player experience.

The game does offset this by having the AI occasionally screw up and either miss their intended target or accidentally hit themselves, but the problem is how it occurs at random without any observable pattern. Worms is a turn based strategy game, but without any sense of consistency, there is nothing to strategize. The entire point of strategy games is to plan out your actions based on observations and to discourage rushing in Leyroy Jenkins style without a plan. If there is no discernible pattern however, that is all you can do.

On top of this, the control scheme for the PC version is awkward as hell and is a huge detriment to the game. Firstly, the worms are controlled using the arrow keys, but one also needs to use the mouse to control the camera and to select which weapon you want to use. Both the arrow keys and the mouse are typically on the right of the player since most people are right handed. However, since there is no option to use the WASD keys for movement, you will likely be controlling everything with your right hand, which makes things much more annoying when you have a 60 second time limit per turn.

Worms Armageddon is a 1999 turn-based strategy video game developed and published by Team17 as part of the Worms series. It was originally released for the Microsoft Windows operating system, and was later ported to the PlayStation, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, and Game Boy Color. In the game, the player controls a team of up to eight earthworms tasked with defeating an opposing team using a wide range of weapons at their disposal. The game takes place on a destructible and customizable two-dimensional board and is characterized by cartoonish graphics and a unique brand of humour.

The third installment in the series, Worms Armageddon was originally developed as an expansion pack to Worms 2 (1997) and initially titled Wormageddon before it was released as a standalone game. As a result the game is very similar to Worms 2 but has a new single-player mode and adds a number of new content[5][6] as well as being released on a wider variety of platforms. Worms Armageddon was acclaimed by critics, who praised the refined gameplay and stylized graphics, and it has been featured in a number of "greatest games of all time" lists. Worms Armageddon on PC is still updated periodically, most recently in 2020. The game was succeeded by Worms World Party (2001), which added further content without drastic change[7] and which was the last 2D-based Worms game before the series moved to 3D.

Gameplay is turn-based, with each team moving in sequence, which is determined randomly, across two-dimensional terrain. During a single turn, a team can only move one of their worms (unless an item that allows the team to select their worm is used). Worms can walk and jump, as well as (when the proper items are available) swing by rope, parachute, teleport, and bungee. The objective of a traditional match is to defeat all opposing teams by killing their worms, although in the campaign some missions have other objectives such as collecting a specific crate.[8]

Each worm begins the round with a specific amount of health, which is predefined by the chosen game options or by scripting in campaign levels. When hit with a weapon, the worm will lose health depending upon the power of the weapon and the directness of the hit.[8] A worm can be killed either by exploding after having its health reduced to zero or by being knocked into the water around and below the level.[9]

The game includes a wide variety of weapons, including melee, projectile, and explosive weapons, as well as airstrike-based attacks. Some are based on real-life arms, such as the shotgun, bazooka, and hand grenade; others are rather fanciful and cartoonish, such as the sheep, which serves as a mobile explosive, and the skunk, which releases poisonous gas. In a normal match, all teams begin with the same weapons, based on the chosen weapon set. Some weapons may not become available until a certain number of turns pass. Depending on the game options, additional weapons may randomly fall onto the terrain in airdropped and teleported crates. In addition to normal weapons, during team creation, each team chooses a special weapon which becomes available to them after a certain number of turns. The special weapons are more powerful than regular weapons and often offer special abilities; super weapons will rarely fall in weapon crates. These weapons are often based on cartoonish themes, such as the French Sheep Strike, and usually devastating in power.[8] In homage to the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of the game weapons is a Holy Hand Grenade, with a sound-effect reminiscent of the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah.[10]

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