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Worms: Open Warfare - Developer Diary #3 Feature
Chris Leyton
15/03/2006
Worms... they're only as good as the weapons they're armed with. In the latest chapter Team17 guides us through some of the team's favourites...
Throughout the series the "Worms" games have always contained a multitude of wacky weapons and utilities. Right from the very first game, Team17 showed what their twisted minds spent all day dreaming up, which included the likes of exploding Sheep, bouncing Banana Bombs, stealth-assassin style Ninja Ropes and futuristic handheld teleportation devices.
Our new game, "Worms: Open Warfare" is at heart a modern reworking of the original two dimensional "Worms" games. It contains a few new features and new landscape themes, but the game-play remains closest to the original 2D games (and intentionally so). It was obvious to us before development started that the original games would make a good fit for the handheld systems. Team17 also have quite a healthy online community built around the "Worms" games and it seems to us that a number of people have been asking for updated versions of the 2D game for quite some time.
In the game, when you open the "Weapons Panel" (something done frequently in "Worms" games, believe me) you'll see that "Worms: Open Warfare" contains up to twenty two different weapons and utilities. All the classics and favourites are here.
The list of available weapons makes up the core of what we find players tend to use the most. There is enough variation between all of the weapons to allow players to employ pretty much any strategy they can conjure.
In previous "Worms" games, you would occasionally find a couple of weapons that would work in similar ways to one another; the only real difference might be in the graphical effects they produced. In "Worms: Open Warfare" each weapon merits its inclusion, by opening up a different tactical option for the player.
Everyone Has a Favourite Weapon!
When quizzed, most "Worms" players would be able to tell you what their favourite weapon is. In my experience, players tend to favour the weapons that do the most damage.
A couple of years ago, on the bus home from work, I ran into an old school friend. He knew I'd joined Team17, and went on to tell me how much he loved "Worms 2". He told me all about how he'd finished it, unlocking the various secrets and weapons along the way. His favourite weapon was the fabled "Concrete Donkey".
"I couldn't believe it when I saw the Donkey! It literally rips islands in two! I thought the Banana Bomb was powerful... but the Donkey is ridiculous!"
He went on to tell me quite excitedly that from now on he was always going to be playing games with the Concrete Donkey.
This always seems to be a great source of amusement for some players; setting weapons aplenty and spending more time blowing things up than actually bothering with silly things like tactics and forward planning in battles.
(Actually, sometimes myself and fellow employees just can't understand it. We talk about online games we've played against community members, games where the powerful weapons were all set to infinite, and we moan about how it wasn't much fun because all they wanted to do was just blow things up and do crazy amounts of damage. We're probably really moaning about the fact that we lost the match.)
So anyway, what is my favourite weapon? I like the close combat weapons a lot. It's a good feeling when (with the simple tap of a button) - WHACK - you punch an enemy off the side of an island, sending them hurtling to their fate. It's even more satisfying should you happen to set off a chain reaction of explosions because your opponent has hit a few landmines on their travels.
But, from all of the weapons throughout the series, my favourite is perhaps the most used weapon in the "Worms" games. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Bazooka.
The Bazooka has to be the most difficult weapon to master, it's certainly the one with the largest opportunity for learning a useful skill that you can employ in the game. When fired, the path of the Bazooka shell is affected by the direction and strength of the wind. This means that with a bit of skill you can pick out opponents in the seemingly most protected areas of the landscape. It's a really satisfying feeling to see a hurtling Bazooka shell change direction just at the moment you anticipated, and arc round and hit your opponent squarely in the tail. It takes a lot of practice to pull off such shots, and these so called "wind-shots" are beyond the range of newcomers. I've been playing "Worms" games for an incredibly long time, and I still can't always make the perfect shot. Somewhere out there though (especially on the Team17 forums) there are ninja skilled Worms players, and they can do the seemingly impossible.
Weapons of Mass Destruction!
Let's take a quick glance at the differences between some of the more exciting weaponry available to the players:
The AirStrike allows the worms to call in air support. If you're the one on the receiving end, you'd best be taking shelter because the AirStrike sends a group of missiles whistling down from the skies above and can inflict heavy damage upon enemies. The AirStrike is a powerful weapon because it allows the attacker to position the strike at any target on the map. Because of the advantages they bring, AirStrikes often come in limited supply.
The Sheep is a cutesy cloud of fluffy joy. A tap of the fire button sets him scampering harmlessly across the island, making sheep-like noises as he goes. All is not quite as it seems however, this is no ordinary member of the herd. At any moment the Sheep causes a huge explosion, taking a large chunk out of the island and doing harm to all around.
The most powerful weapon in "Worms: Open Warfare" is by far the Banana Bomb! This weapon is incredibly unpredictable due to the fact that it is incredibly bouncy! After the Banana Bomb's fuse expires, the weapon shatters into a cluster of smaller bomblets that rain down upon the landscape, creating massive craters in the land and dealing out hefty damage to all worms in the vicinity.
Those are some of the effects of the weapons in Worms: Open Warfare, to see how the others work you'll have to grab a copy of the game and try them for yourselves!
