Worms World Party Hands-On
We've recently taken a close look at the latest build of Titus' upcoming Worms World Party for the Sega Dreamcast. It features online play and a number of other interesting options.
Worms World Party, released this March for the PC and the Dreamcast, offers fans of previous Worms games and new players alike a strategy experience dedicated to online competition. The aggressive annelids have returned in this exceedingly playable and decidedly humorous next chapter in the Worms saga. Recent Worms games have lacked new gameplay options, something that Team 17 has addressed with a bevy of new missions, training disciplines, and, most importantly, a game dedicated to competition on the "Wormnet," where players can meet for a heavy dose of trash talking and explosive invertebrate destruction.
The way a game of Worms works remains essentially unchanged since its previous versions. Teams of weapon-laden worms are spread out on a randomly generated or preset battlefield that can either take the form of a nook-and-cranny-ridden cavern or an island. Teams then take turns controlling one of their worms, the goal being the destruction of the opposing worm force. The nearly 60 weapons available to your worms are a veritable arsenal of death and tongue-in-cheek destruction. In addition to warfare staples like grenades, handguns, napalm, and bazookas, your worms can summon more unorthodox weapons of mayhem. You can launch exploding sheep, sickness-inducing skunks, or burrowing mole bombs as well as more oddball weapons such as the mighty mad cows, banana bombs, grumbling old ladies, and, in a tip of the hat to Monty Python, the holy hand grenades. Fans of street fighter will be pleased to know that the "dragon ball" and "fire punch" martial arts techniques are back, complete with the trademark animated donning of the Ryu headband. Despite the variety, the weapons set found in this game is not quite as impressive as that found in Worms Armageddon. Worms World Party lacks some favorites like the mail strike and stone donkey but is well rounded enough to still encourage a variety of tactics and stratagems.
Employing these weapons involves making use of a relatively deep system where trajectory, distance, wind speed, and strength affect your aim. The most effective strategies employ timely movement and proper exploitation of the destructible terrain. Opening up a crater beneath a worm can turn him into a prime target for a follow-up grenade, minimizing your own casualties, while destroying enough of the terrain beneath a worm can send him into the water. Worms can't swim very well, so propelling one into the drink will eliminate him. If drowning isn't your cup of tea, using explosives and armaments to drop his life down to nothing will also result in the worm's apparent defeat and self-inflicted explosion. Getting caught in the vengeful death throes of a worm can be painful in itself, so it's best to avoid close proximity to victims. Destroying crates or oil barrels can cause flaming petrol to coat the ground, causing a possible combo attack. This may further cause multiple damage and may induce a replay mode, which handily pops up letting you rejoice in your clever attack for a second time or forcing you to take your lumps in shame. Combat is thus focused on making decisive killings and rapid eliminations. The Dreamcast controller is well suited for Worms gameplay, allowing smooth control for jumping forward, backward, weapon select and shooting as well as convenient analog stick control for camera movement. However, some of the functions, such as the worm select and effective ninja roping are less than intuitive.
World Party hasn't left the conventions set before it and graphically looks identical to its predecessors. The worms are small, 2D sprites on 2D backgrounds, competing on terrain that is either a whimsically creative design like a giant chicken or a randomly generated organic-shaped landmass, coated with a wallpaper effect if you so desire. The backgrounds and prerendered battlefields are of an arguably improved artistic quality, and you can see that Team 17 put a lot of effort into creating a few of the more impressive terrains. The attack and death animations, including some never seen before, are simple, fast, and often comical, without disrupting the pace of the action. For those who need two lumps of graphics with their gameplay, World Party also features a number of FMV movies.
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