Worms Armageddon

While not the first game in the series, Worms Armageddon was the first time I ever experienced true multiplayer mayhem.

Worms is (in most cases) a 2-D side-view turn-based strategy game. Were there enough hyphens in that sentence for you? In case you have never played a game in the Worms series before, the game goes something like this: between 2 and 4 teams enter into a death match. The action is turn based and you have X number of seconds to complete each turn. Your “worms” can walk sideways and jump over obstacles. Once you have selected a position you open up a weapons menu and choose your means of destruction. You lose when all of your worms have had their health brought down to 0 or when they have all fallen into the water.

If you’re using today’s ADD-riddled Madden-playing jock’s standard for graphics, then this game looks TERRIBLE! There are no polygons, no bump mapping, nothing but beautiful pixels. The colors are very vibrant and the level landscapes are always full of amusing objects. The game is very well animated, with a facial expression or body movement for about any situation that could possibly arise. The sound is another fun aspect, your worms talk while you play. Yelling simple phrases like “Take this!” or “Die you zombie bastards!” (Okay, so I made that last one up) really add to the flavor of the game. There are even speech settings on a per-team basis for your worms so that they have different accents and phrases based upon the dialect you choose.

Single-player mode is fun and all, but this game really shines when you play multiplayer death matches with your friends. As previously stated you can have up to four people playing in a single round. This makes for all kinds of chaos when choosing which worms to take out and when. Do you go after that guy on the red team who shot your worm into the water at the beginning of the game, or do you partner up with him to take out the green team who still has all four of their worms at high health? You have to remember to be careful though, as any competitive game like this can result in physical injury as well.

This game is incredibly fun and incredibly frustrating at the same time. Fun while winning, but the tides can quickly turn and you may find yourself at the bottom of a large pit created in the landscape after a super-weapon has been detonated. Then the other teams take turns lobbing grenades down into your pit and taunting you because you can’t get out. That’s when things start to get hazy and you wake up in a strange man’s house with blood on your hands and the taste of day-old rum in your mouth… But maybe that’s just me. Hmm… Where was I? Oh! The Worms series is pretty awesome and shouldn’t be too hard to find. So get some friends together and try not to kill anyone!

Jumping Flash - PlayStation

Welcome to what will hopefully be the first of many reviews for what we consider to be great classic games. We are not trying to be the first, the only or the best classic reviewers around. We understand that we cannot make everyone happy. Bearing this in mind, we’re here to write about our experiences playing these games and can only hope to influence people who have never heard of or played these games to enjoy them as much as we have. So without further ado, we’ll get this started with Jumping Flash.

To say that Jumping Flash was weird is an understatement. The first time I played this game was on a PlayStation demo disc. First-person was still relatively new to me outside of shooters like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. Nevertheless I was suddenly thrust face-first into a world of floating islands, gigantic frying pans with eggs and a carrot-shooting mechanized rabbit called a robbit. This was an age when jumping three consecutive times was all but unheard of. After my initial shock I was quite pleased to hear that the music was awesome and that exploring the vivid worlds would be an immersing experience, instead of a mind numbing trek through lifeless realms. There are blimps with adverts, dragonflies and even windmills all in the first level of the game.

The background story for the game is pretty strange as well; an evil Baron has stolen large chunks of land from the surface of your planet and is using them for his own nefarious purposes. You must board your mech-like robbit and use it to fight against the Baron and his henchmen to free the ill-gotten land from his floating space-octopus…thing and return it to where it came from.

I can only speculate as to the state of mind of the folks who created this game, but I’ve always imagined that the planning meetings went something like this:

Developer 1: “Hey man, why don’t we put frying pans on top of the floating islands?”

Developer 2: “That’s a great idea! The frying pans could have eggs cooking inside of them!”

Developer 1: “Do you think we should call them skillets instead?”

Developer 2: “Nah, it’s too late for that. Get this down to the artists!”

..Or something like that anyways.

I had all but forgotten about Jumping Flash until a couple years ago. When I remembered how much I enjoyed the game I immediately set out to procure a copy so that I could play it, but was met with defeat time and again as I checked all of my usual used game outlets. Even the shop that usually carried rare (see: expensive) games hadn’t ever seen a copy of the game come through their doors. When I found out that this game was available over the PlayStation Network I glanced down and noticed that my wallet had somehow made its way into my hand. If you’ve never played Jumping Flash before, or just can’t find a copy anywhere, it’s well worth the couple dollars it would cost you to download through PSN.