Duthos
14 Dec 2010, 10:50
Make worms one playable again. There was... something in that game that the sequels never recaptured.
Character. Many may call me on this, but aside from the new voice sets the new worms actually have less character than the original 12 pixel ones. Like how they used to kick(?) a grenade off thier tail (leg?) and bounce it off thier heads. Or how the worms used to wear soldiers uniforms complete with vest and helm. While the new worms certainly have more frames, they do not have many more animations, just surrender and skip turn I think. A worm pulling his head of the dirt and falling on his butt was novel and funny, and while the 'stuck' thing has been kept, the memorable 'pop' is gone, as is the whole falling on thier butt thing. And it isn't just the worms themselves, the very first time I heard a mine beep a part of my soul died. What is the point of a mine that warns you it is gonna kill you. Yeah, I know that is a changeable option, makes it no less silly. Also it defeats the best part of worms, that shot that fires one worm into about six mines and does a hilarious pinpall impersonation. And how many times have you accidently stepped on a mine in the car levels because they blended in so well?
Weapons. Kinda in line with character, but aside form a couple 'one-off' novelties, most of the weapons were serious... well, weapons. Shotgun, bazooka, grenades, dynamite, airstrikes, you know, things you would use in war. Hell, even an exploding sheep may have strategic use, whereas a pigeon could never carry a payload and putting a cape on said sheep would destroy its strategic use. The explosions in the original felt like explosions, the single frame flash, loud, short, sharp blast, and flying fallout that bouced around and ultimately vanished. The way the map wa blown apart, with individual pixels bouncing into nothingness when unloading a minigun, you know, back before each crater had an artificial looking line along the edge and the bombs looked like nerf productions.
Scale. Remember when you lobbed that grenade at 80% of your bar with a five second fuse over a valley or mountain and nailed an enemy three screens away? Remember how flawlessly smooth the transitions were with the zoom out and immediate zoom in to your next worm? In every worms from 2 onward the map size has been about 2 screens. It becomes a game of tactics rather than accuracy. When I tried the reloaded demo, and saw 10 worms on screen at once with about two paces between them, I quit. Related to weapons, there was a very real charm to trying to nail your friend from across the map when all you had left was the bazooka and grenade and even if you got the best possible weapon drop it was not guaranteed to win. Even homing missiles had weaknesses you, the player, needed to work around. But it takes stupidity or terrible fortune to miss with a super sheep.
Random Maps. Remember the old map generator. It was; 'here is one, no? OK, here is another.' It took about two seconds to get a new random map, now all you can do is regenerate one with the same paramaters YOU define. While it is true that this makes it easier to get the specific map you want, getting the map you want is hardly random. It takes much longer to get a new map with the new system, especially if you want to play one radically different than what you just did. And what the hell happened to the hell levels? They were my favorite. The only thing the hell levels needed was the soundrack Earthworm Jim used for the 'What the heck!?' to be truly perfect. Or those rugged vietnam style jungle.
Contrast. This is completely gone. Part of the art of the first was that it was a game of worms with bazookas, so it is immedietly silly, but the art style, characters, explosions, weapons and most everything else was gritty, had a kind of psuedo realism that just seemed natural and was in perfect contrast to the ludicrous premise. Now it is all cartoony, the explosions feel... soft, and not even the worms seem to take it seriously anymore.
I am beggin' ya guys. You have the code, update it to run on 64-bit systems without altering any of the core gameplay and I, if only I, will forgive you all these 'sequels.' And if you want to milk it a bit; maybe stick in some new voice options/banks, give the graphics a minor facelift a la Mario Allstars and I will gladly buy this title again. And I will wager I would not be the only one.
And a final thought on the character of worms compared to all its sequels; earthworms are cooler than tapeworms.
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd71/mushi07/earthworm.jpghttp://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images20/BrunoBoxerPuppyWorms19Weeks5.JPG
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/8539/newbitmapimagerm.pnghttp://www.gamershell.com/static/boxart/large/1113.jpg
Character. Many may call me on this, but aside from the new voice sets the new worms actually have less character than the original 12 pixel ones. Like how they used to kick(?) a grenade off thier tail (leg?) and bounce it off thier heads. Or how the worms used to wear soldiers uniforms complete with vest and helm. While the new worms certainly have more frames, they do not have many more animations, just surrender and skip turn I think. A worm pulling his head of the dirt and falling on his butt was novel and funny, and while the 'stuck' thing has been kept, the memorable 'pop' is gone, as is the whole falling on thier butt thing. And it isn't just the worms themselves, the very first time I heard a mine beep a part of my soul died. What is the point of a mine that warns you it is gonna kill you. Yeah, I know that is a changeable option, makes it no less silly. Also it defeats the best part of worms, that shot that fires one worm into about six mines and does a hilarious pinpall impersonation. And how many times have you accidently stepped on a mine in the car levels because they blended in so well?
Weapons. Kinda in line with character, but aside form a couple 'one-off' novelties, most of the weapons were serious... well, weapons. Shotgun, bazooka, grenades, dynamite, airstrikes, you know, things you would use in war. Hell, even an exploding sheep may have strategic use, whereas a pigeon could never carry a payload and putting a cape on said sheep would destroy its strategic use. The explosions in the original felt like explosions, the single frame flash, loud, short, sharp blast, and flying fallout that bouced around and ultimately vanished. The way the map wa blown apart, with individual pixels bouncing into nothingness when unloading a minigun, you know, back before each crater had an artificial looking line along the edge and the bombs looked like nerf productions.
Scale. Remember when you lobbed that grenade at 80% of your bar with a five second fuse over a valley or mountain and nailed an enemy three screens away? Remember how flawlessly smooth the transitions were with the zoom out and immediate zoom in to your next worm? In every worms from 2 onward the map size has been about 2 screens. It becomes a game of tactics rather than accuracy. When I tried the reloaded demo, and saw 10 worms on screen at once with about two paces between them, I quit. Related to weapons, there was a very real charm to trying to nail your friend from across the map when all you had left was the bazooka and grenade and even if you got the best possible weapon drop it was not guaranteed to win. Even homing missiles had weaknesses you, the player, needed to work around. But it takes stupidity or terrible fortune to miss with a super sheep.
Random Maps. Remember the old map generator. It was; 'here is one, no? OK, here is another.' It took about two seconds to get a new random map, now all you can do is regenerate one with the same paramaters YOU define. While it is true that this makes it easier to get the specific map you want, getting the map you want is hardly random. It takes much longer to get a new map with the new system, especially if you want to play one radically different than what you just did. And what the hell happened to the hell levels? They were my favorite. The only thing the hell levels needed was the soundrack Earthworm Jim used for the 'What the heck!?' to be truly perfect. Or those rugged vietnam style jungle.
Contrast. This is completely gone. Part of the art of the first was that it was a game of worms with bazookas, so it is immedietly silly, but the art style, characters, explosions, weapons and most everything else was gritty, had a kind of psuedo realism that just seemed natural and was in perfect contrast to the ludicrous premise. Now it is all cartoony, the explosions feel... soft, and not even the worms seem to take it seriously anymore.
I am beggin' ya guys. You have the code, update it to run on 64-bit systems without altering any of the core gameplay and I, if only I, will forgive you all these 'sequels.' And if you want to milk it a bit; maybe stick in some new voice options/banks, give the graphics a minor facelift a la Mario Allstars and I will gladly buy this title again. And I will wager I would not be the only one.
And a final thought on the character of worms compared to all its sequels; earthworms are cooler than tapeworms.
http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd71/mushi07/earthworm.jpghttp://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images20/BrunoBoxerPuppyWorms19Weeks5.JPG
http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/8539/newbitmapimagerm.pnghttp://www.gamershell.com/static/boxart/large/1113.jpg