We've known that Team 17's warmongering worms were planning to invade
the PSP since July of 2005, but we've only recently managed to obtain a
work-in-progress version of Worms: Open Warfare to see what their plans
for next month are really about. Although many of the more recent Worms
games have attempted to shoehorn the 10-year-old 2D formula into 3D,
we're pleased to report that Worms: Open Warfare will see the series
returning to its glorious 2D roots, albeit with improved visuals and
wireless multiplayer support.
As has been the case with a number of previous Worms games, the first
thing you'll see when you stick Worms: Open Warfare into your PSP is
one of several different intro movies that show the titular annelids
putting various weapons from their arsenal to use, often with comical
results. When you get to the main menu, your options will include
jumping into a quick game, creating a custom game to your liking,
playing through tutorial-style challenges, and hosting or joining
wireless multiplayer battle. You'll also have the option to customize
the worms that you'll be playing with by changing their names, their
speech banks, and the appearance of the gravestones that they leave
behind whenever they get killed. When customizing CPU-controlled teams,
you also have the option to choose one of five personalities for each
team, which include vengeful, reckless, cocky, stupid, and strategic.
Regardless of the skill settings and personalities that you've opted
to pit your annelid army of four against, one thing is certain: Chaos
will ensue within moments of you stepping onto the randomly generated
battlefield. Each battlefield is generated using a combination of 10
letters and numbers, and the number of possibilities is practically
limitless. You'll have the option of generating maps using phone
numbers and friends' names, for example, or of writing down the codes
of maps that you particularly enjoyed playing. Once you've got the
basic shape of your map finalized, you can opt for one of six different
visual themes for it. The themes on offer in Worms: Open Warfare
include a volcanic island, the fiery depths of hell, a jungle, the
moon, an iceberg with a great view of the Titanic, and London. Each of
the themes has its own animated background and collection of objects
that get randomly placed on the map before each battle. When going to
war in London, for example, you'll see a number of the city's famous
landmarks in the background and you'll be fighting on a map strewn with
Royal Mail postboxes and red double-decker buses.
The action in Worms: Open Warfare, as in previous Worms games,
is turn-based, and although many of the gameplay options are
customizable, the default settings give each worm around 45 seconds to
move and attack, and then an additional five seconds to retreat to
somewhere safe. The default game length is 10 minutes, after which any
remaining worms' health will be knocked down to a single point in
readiness for sudden death mode, which also sees the water level at the
bottom of the screen rising--forcing any worms in hiding to make their
way to higher ground. Our work-in-progress version of Worms: Open
Warfare also included an option to customize the weapon set that will
be available during a battle by assigning a number between zero and
infinity for each of the 20 that make up the game's arsenal.
If you're a fan of the Worms series you'll know that an arsenal of
20 different weapons and gadgets is quite modest compared to those in
some of the previous games. Some of the most memorable Worms weapons
are absent in Worms: Open Warfare (exploding grannies anyone?), but
those that did make the cut offer up plenty of different ways for you
to kill and be killed. The full list of weapons and gadgets in Worms:
Open Warfare, at least in our version, is as follows: bazooka, homing
missile, grenade, cluster bomb, banana bomb, dynamite, air strike,
shotgun, Uzi, fire punch, dragonball, prod, blowtorch, mine, sheep,
kamikaze, rope, girder, jetpack, and teleport. The amount of damage
that you can do with any given weapon is rarely proportionate to its
ease of use, but the default gameplay options ensure that the more
powerful weapons are available only in very limited numbers, and often
only if you collect them from crates that randomly drop onto the map
during battle. The weapons that you'll always have an unlimited supply
of are those that are the most difficult to use effectively. Thrown
weapons such as grenades and cluster bombs, for example, are tricky to
use because you have to figure out the correct trajectory and strength
for your throw. Bazookas work in much the same way, but they are also
affected by the wind, which changes quite dramatically between every
turn.
The good news, at least if you're playing against CPU teams, is that
your adversaries will often appear to find the effective use of many
weapons every bit as difficult as you do. The bad news is that this
deliberate flaw in their artificial intelligence generally manifests
itself in the form of downright stupidity. For example, it's not
uncommon for worms to hurt or kill themselves with bazookas and
grenades, and we've even seen worms teleporting into the water and
drowning. Ironically, these same worms will occasionally launch attacks
with such accuracy that it seems not a single location on the map can
elude them. These overly erratic AI issues will no doubt be addressed
before Worms: Open Warfare arrives in stores next month, but it's a
testament to the series' classic gameplay that it suffers very little
as a result of those problems right now. We look forward to bringing
you more information on Worms: Open Warfare as soon as we get our hands
on a more complete version of the game.
Source:
GameSpot