Fire in the wormhole! Review

Fire in the wormhole!

There are many great puzzles in life. Why is the sky blue? Why can’t I find those

missing socks? Why does every successful game series inevitably wind up redone

as a silly kart or puzzle game?

Think about it. Bomberman, already a party game, has Bomberman Fantasy

Race and Bomberman Puzzle. Sonic does the Sonic Shuffle with

the Mean Bean Machine while jetting off with Sonic R. Do I even

need to list the Mario games? What’s next – Splinter Cell Jumble Mania?

In

the latest example of brand extension, Worms Blast combines the aim and

shoot of Bust-A-Move

with the arc trajectory and power of the Worms

series. The product is uniquely Worms with a different sense of pacing

than your average puzzler. There’s a plethora of different challenges here,

and outside of a sluggish control setup, it’s a charming and smartly milked

reinvention of Worms.

If you are looking for a story, you’re looking in the wrong place. For some reason or another, worms, pigeons, skunks, and something that I still don’t know what in the hell it is have armed themselves with a vast payload of weaponry. Inexplicably, a barrage of colored orbs keeps raining down from the sky, and our heroes have taken to the waters in little tiny boats in an attempt to fight the falling skies.

As in Bust-A-Move, the slowly descending orbs can be destroyed with

a like-colored shot. Luckily, the animals have a bazooka that fires blasts of

changing colors. If they fire the wrong color at one of the orbs, the orb and

all of the orbs it touches will change into the color of the blast.

From this simple premise, Worms Blast derives three principle game

modes: Puzzle, Human Versus Computer and Human Versus Human. But all three modes

are hampered by a sluggish control scheme.

The controls are limited to strafing and aiming. While you can make slight

adjustment in the direction, once you are aiming your shot, you cannot turn

around. Annoyingly, there are extra factors to account for, such as drift and

the slight but notable motions of the waves.

Perhaps this general sluggishness was meant to encourage better aiming and

discourage your character from moving around, but there are puzzle stages in

Worms Blast where you implicitly have to move around. A strong

sense of timing is crucial to survival, but the lack of responsive controls

makes the game harder than it should be.

If you fire a blast off screen, the sky will get even angrier and drop a safe or an anvil on your head. The moment you realize that the shot is veering off, you have to start skootching away in order to avoid the return fire. It’s hard to do this thanks to the slow control. At best, it’s incentive to not fire off screen. At worst, it further illustrates the bad movement.

The

main mode, Puzzle, takes whatever animal you’ve selected across a map of different

points. While traveling from point to point, your journey is interrupted with

a set of puzzles. Each set is comprised of one of a long list of different challenges.

Sometimes it’s the ubiquitous ‘clear the screen’, while other times you must

only clear one color without touching another. There are also target practice

rounds where you must hit groups of orbs in the shape of fruit or little tiny

target boards. At times, the game is almost like the ‘Missions’ mode from the

original Worms, as you try to arc and power a shot to land perfectly

on target.

The puzzle challenges can be frustrating in a positive way that pushes you

to try again. And again. And again. Unfortunately, the disappointing exclusion

of the trademark Worms animations means the only real incentive to conquer

the map is to unlock game modes.

Versus the Computer/Human modes pit you directly against a computer or human

opponent. These two game modes take the most advantage of the alternate weapons,

from shotgun blasts to the more outrageous weather changes and squid attacks.

In some of the multiplayer game modes, such as Deathmatch, a slot will occasionally

open up between the two players. This offers a chance for some familiar Worms

offensive, letting you lob shots directly at the other player. It’s a cool way

of bringing in some classic Worms gameplay.

The graphics capture the look and feel of Worms with soft, pastoral

backgrounds. The characters are rendered with flat shading, but they’re so small

it hardly makes a difference. The music is lively, but generic, and I wish there

were more trademark Worms sound bites.

Worms Blast has the core of great puzzle game, from the range of game

modes to the interesting characters. Unfortunately, the sluggish if workable

controls put a damper on the overall feel. Still, there’s enough merit in these

Worms to dig ’em out for a try.