Worms Forts: Under Siege
We take a closer look at how Worms Forts actually works and blow up a few grannies and bishops in the process.
Ask the average gamer to describe Worms and they can. No problem at all. Heck, ask their wives, girlfriends, younger sisters or even their parents, and most of them have played it, or at least seen it. It's rather surreal, the idea of wriggly invertebrates with squeaky voices and bombs shaped like bananas, but after a handful of major revisions across countless platforms from the Amiga right up to the Xbox, the concept is certainly ubiquitous. There's even an N-Gage version (of the four year old Worms World Party, oddly) due out this year.
Consolidation
Worms Forts, on the other hand, is a bit trickier. Ask the average gamer to describe it and chances are they won't be able to - or won't have a firm idea of what's involved. It's as much about building up forts as firing explosive hamsters and lurching around on ninja ropes, they might say, but beyond that they're likely to mumble something about the time and then attempt to steer the conversation towards the time they trapped a friend's worm in a hole with a Holy Hand Grenade.
Hallelujah, then, because during a recent trip to Sega's London headquarters we had a chance to tackle the game ourselves, and really get to grips with the mechanics of building up a fort and laying down our pink lives in its defence. Twiddling with the Xbox version for an hour or so - after admiring the soon-to-be-explored Xbox Live options in the easily navigated menu - we not only got our heads around the fortifications, but also wrapped a few others around their own using the game's arsenal of 30 weapons, many of which are brand new.
As you will know if you read our take on the game during E3, it all starts out with a pair of central fortresses located at opposite corners of the map - or all four if you're playing with a larger group - and four worms grouped around each of them. During our test session we played on one of the ancient Egyptian maps - a big square pyramid in the middle of the ocean with passages carved through the centre, palm trees dotted around the edge and an expanse of wooden decking running around the base.
So, er, command and conquer!
The idea is to split your turns between building and blasting your enemies. Each turn you can build something, and if you're quick enough you also can clamber - or double-jump, jetpack or ninja rope - your way onto the top of it and shoot off a big weapon during the same go. You can win the game by wiping out your opponent's worms or his central fort block, but the latter isn't as easy as it sounds. With each turn you get to build outward on a sort of loose grid system, erecting towers, keeps, castles and citadels. You'll see towers spring up - and walls leap up to connect them to any other fortifications in the vicinity - and as long as you keep building on and thereby taking control of the map's 'victory locations', you'll gain access to bigger buildings and bigger weapons.
Along the way, you'll have to decide whether to keep building in the hope of amassing bigger weapons, or whether you need to spend the odd turn building a hospital or a weapons factory to drop health and weapon pickup crates, or a science lab to boost the power of your arsenal. Eventually, with enough victory locations under your control, you'll be able to build a 'Wonder'. Keeping a Wonder for a set amount of turns also results in a win, but it'll take ages to get there - and your opponent will almost certainly go hell for leather trying to take it down when you do. We would. We'd use rhinos and hippos and fridge launchers.
Of course, you can do this with a number of things. You still have bazookas, grenades, fire punches and the like at your disposal, but as you build bigger and bigger fortifications you get the chance to use more impressive weaponry. Hop up on top of a castle, for example, and you can opt for the Granny-on-a-stair-lift - a giant circular platform with a spiralling staircase and a Stena-bound octogenarian, which delivers her onto the ground when you press fire, at which point she potters around at your analogue stick's behest (at least to a certain extent - she won't be rushed), eventually exploding in an amusingly violent manner.
In my day...
If she happens to take out the connecting wall between a couple of your enemy's forts, the farthest flung of them will be destroyed, and of course she may also inflict some damage upon his worms, depending on where they're positioned. At the very least she'll probably start a fire, and send any hapless wrigglers bouncing along the flaming floor yelping in pain - in much the same way worms used to float along scorching beds of napalm clasping their backsides in the 2D Worms titles.
If a granny doesn't do the job, you can change tack and perhaps opt for a napalm strike - delivered in impressive fashion in the Egyptian scenario by a giant wooden bird. The results - and the improved explosion effects - are devastating. Another option (perhaps our favourite) is the Bishop, who flies through the air with his little feet flapping and his staff and hat dancing in the breeze, only to explode in a shower of bible-shaped mini explosions. It's the banana bomb for the next generation.
Team 17 is planning some 30 weapons in total, and that's before you take into account jetpacks, bungee ropes, and all the usual tools of the trade. But not, somewhat to some people's surprise, the pneumatic drill. That's because Worms Forts no longer uses the series' trademark deformable scenery - a decision that seems destined to polarise opinion on the game. Here instead the forts themselves are destructible, and they certainly crumble and shatter in exciting fashion, but there's still the sense that something important has been left out of the equation - our Sega rep rightly pointed out that Team 17 has been able to up the detail level somewhat now that it doesn't have to worry about what happens to the ground when a bazooka hits it, but if there is a potential stumbling block to the new approach, then perhaps that's it. It's one of those "time will tell" things though, unfortunately, and we'll need a bit longer to make our minds up.
Building blocks
Fortunately, there's not long to go now until we get the chance to do that. Sega Europe is aiming to release Worms Forts in late September on PC, PS2 and Xbox, with online play for both the PC and Xbox versions. On this evidence, it's certainly a brave experiment - and it's going to be interesting to see whether the massed ranks of Worms fans take to it in the same way they did the originals.
Worms: Forts Under Siege is due out on PC, PS2 and Xbox this September.