MORE BLOOD MORE BLOOD MORE BLOOD MORE BLOOD

Yesterday was kind of a shitty day, and today wasn't great either.  But I'm home, which means I can sit here, write this blog, catch up on my missed WWE content, and try to get a halfway decent night's sleep.  Probably not going to happen, but a man can dream...on the plus side, I have a fruit smoothie that I am consuming as part of my dinner, and it's turning out better than my first attempt.  So there's a positive part of the day.  The other positive part of the day is looking forward to sleep.

Man, when did my life get to the point where I'm looking forward to sleep?  In all honesty, I hate sleep. If it wasn't necessary to not go insane and die, I would never sleep again.  Think of how much extra stuff you could accomplish with those extra 6-8 hours every day.  I, for one, would sacrifice sleep forever if it meant I could survive and not go crazy in the meanwhile.  

Okay, let's go ahead and talk about some more multiplayer games.  Well, just one.  Well, TECHNIALLY it's a series of games, but it's a series of games under one banner. Let's talk about Worms.

I should actually preface this by explaining that the first game of this style that I played was not, in fact, Worms, but an old PC game called Scorched Earth.  I remember playing that game in middle school with friends, and it was a cool little game.  It didn't have the depth of the Worms franchise, but it was a nice introduction to the genre.  It was (I believe) two player only, and you only had one weapon available to blow up your opponent. You had to adjust your shot aim, power, and account for wind resistance, but other than that, all you had to do was blow up your opponent.

There were probably other turn-based strategy games in the Worms vein before Worms came out, but the original Worms was the first one of that particular genre I remember playing.  Back when I thought emulating old Nintendo games was completely fine, I ran across a SNES game called Worms.  I had no idea what it was, but I figured I would give it a try.  It turned out to be a really fun game  If you've played any of the games in the Worms franchise after the original, then went back to try out the original, you would find it rather plodding and dull.  Sure, it did have Team 17's trademark silly sense of humor, but it was nowhere near the level of current Worms titles.  Still, for the mid-1990's it was a really fun game.  I never had a chance to play that one with friends, so I would always dominate the CPU players.

The next Worms title I discovered was Worms Armageddon.  Talk about an upgrade.  The worms had faces and voices, movement was vastly superior to the original game, and there were so very many silly weapons.  Sadly, I never got a chance to play this with friends, either, as it was (if I recall correctly) local multiplayer only.  But I did pick it up in a recent Steam sale, and it might have online capabilities, so if I ever get up the gumption to play Worms Armageddon instead of the other, more recent Worms titles, I'll give it a shot.

Worms Reloaded and Worms Revolution took the Worms formula (which I just now realize I never really described) and upped the ante a little more each time.  What formula is this?  Well, it's fairly simple: you have a squad of worms armed to the teeth (do worms have teeth?) with various explosive weaponry, from a bazooka to a shotgun to the power to hurl a hadouken at your enemies.  There were also various silly weapons, from an explosive sheep to a banana bomb to the infamous Holy Hand Grenade (that, prior to exploding, would cue a “HALLELUJAH!” from the heavens).  The ultimate goal of the game was to be the last team standing.  The terrain factored into play quite a bit, as the environments were destructible, meaning you could blast a hole underneath your opponent and watch him fall to his death.  Also, each level was essentially an island, so knocking your opponent into the water was an instant kill. Because worms can't swim.  Obviously.  On the whole, it's a really fun series of games that tends to not ruin friendships like some other competitive multiplayer games.

Before I end this entry (I know it's still not super deep into today's post, but I'm just gearing up to finish this so I can relax afterward), I would like to talk a bit about a game that was obviously inspired by Worms: Liero.  I had forgotten about Liero until I decided to talk about Worms today. Liero was a sort of real-time Worms, where you and several friends would pick five weapons and you would run around a destructible level trying to kill each other.  There was copious amounts of blood and a huge variety of weapons you could choose between.  The game was also fairly easily moddable, so you could change weapon properties and create all sorts of levels.  One of my favorite things to do when I played the game alone was to lower the weapon reload times to 0 and use a weapon called the Gauss Gun to just rocket across the level in a split second.  There were some weapons that, if fired at a certain angle, would jam your character into the wall, making it invincible. It was a really fun game that I haven't played in probably a decade. No idea if it holds up.  Probably not.  The graphics were pretty crude, but overall it was a fun experience back when I was 15 or so.

Just finished the pre-alpha demo!

Grab it here:

Windows : http://goo.gl/fr59BE 

Mac : http://goo.gl/5xew6g 

Linux : http://goo.gl/XTGcw9 

  Help me out on Steam greenlight :

The Code League will soon kick off the First season. Here is a little video we made of worm warfare as a prequel and a taste of things to come.