Worms on Parade

*This post originally appeared on my old Wordpress blog that is now deleted.*

I can remember the first time I played a Worms game. It was 2000 and I was over at my cousin's house. I remember seeing the thick jewel case, one that I would later see holding multi-disk games like Gran Turismo or Final Fantasy 7, but it was just deep, and held a single disk: Worms Armageddon. The cartoonishness of the weaponry and the characters took me by surprise and really did stick out in my brain as one of those crystalline moments that defines your tastes in things.

I had grown up playing Artillery style games, that would eventually become the Worms games. From Windows 3.1's Bang Bang (Play here) or the shareware version of Howitzer (found here) and games like it on some 1001+ Shareware title CD-ROM on the family Windows 95 computer. There's something about fine-tuning your aiming until you can get your target dead to rights that appealed to me as a kid. Playing Worms represented a huge change in how I saw these games though. In these games, the targets could move, both willingly and by force. Suddenly those cannons weren't stationary targets that I started to zero in on, these were targets where I could make my own direct, or indirect in the case of some weapons, shots. This leads to some very chaotic matches.

For those unfamiliar, in a game of Worms, you control 1-8, usually 4, little animated worms with silly hats. Your goal is to deplete the hit points of the opposing teams using various weapons ranging from your default Bazooka and Grenades to things like the Fire Punch (see also: Shoryuken), Dynamite, Cluster Bombs, Air Strikes, Sheep, Baseball Bats, Uzis, Grandmas, Flamethrowers and Holy Hand Grenades. The weapons have various properties, but the main ones are just blast radius, knockback, and damage dealt. The fights take place usually on these wildly decorated islands where everything's destructible and the water at the bottom and on the edges will immediately kill a worm. The landscape is scattered with barrels that explode when struck and have flames that fan out for a short time, landmines that blow up when walked by (and can be moved with explovies/gunfire), and just all sorts of things that get in your way, as mystery weapon crates and healing items drop from the sky. The game is turn based, so an element of luck comes into play for these drops, but also plays into the strategy. Do you use your one item that lets you pick which worm acts this turn, to break out of your normal rotation order? Do you use your one jetpack to grab a health pack with your almost dead worm? Is sacrificing your full health worm to kill two enemies worth it? With turns usually being less than 60 seconds long, you need to think and move quick to get into position to take your shot, and even then, a bit of terrain or the wind can ruin your well laid plan. You start to get attached to these little guys as you take them through round after round. You customize their hats, their victory dance, their tombstone when they die, and even pick their voice bank for when they take actions. These little guys worm their way into your heart.

Later games in the series try to change up the formula some, to provide a twist to the core gameplay experience. Worms WMD lets you pilot helicopters and mechs, while also allowing you to deconstruct and construct your arsenal. If you have collected materials, you can pull up the menu on your opponents' turn or your turn, start a building project, and in a number of turns, you'll have a new weapon or utility item. Worms Revolution played with the idea of giving your worms Classes, that give them different traits, such as the heavy ones being slow, but dealing more damage and having more health, and the scouts being lighter, jump further, run faster, but easier to kill. Worms Reloaded kept some of those changes as well. They've also added things like more dynamic stage elements, like non-instantly-lethal water that slowly ticks off health at the end of turns, objects that can be moved with a Telekinesis ability, and things that explode into noxious fumes that linger and poison worms. Later games really do reward exploring and exploiting the terrain to give yourself an advantage.

This sort of haphazard free for all makes the game wildly fun, especially with friends. Like many good multiplayer games, ad hoc alliances are made and then discarded when you see an airstrike can knock one player out and harm another. It lends itself well to a night of having a few drinks and teasing your friends, either in person or online. From playing pass-and-play on the Game Boy Color version to just having a gas online with friends, the Worms games have provided me with a ton of enjoyment. These little cartoon friends have set themselves up as a tentpole in my gaming history, and I look at them with fondness.