In Progress AAR: Worms Reloaded

[Urist McLurker]

Reminds me of the worms series, starts off with shit filled pipes around traffic lights, goes to awesome newspaper box things, up into more pipes full of shit, then it gets really shitty but tries to convince you otherwise with gimmicks such as hotdogs, then they return to the same shit they had at the start hoping no one would notice.

Jetpack time

Zoom.. I barely made it up to the pipe before having to put on another jetpack.

Two shotgun shots take care of Traffic.

Now the AI is going to be pissed

'No wind you say? WELL WE'RE GOING TO BLOW SHIT UP ANYWAY' is what I like to think that thought bubble is trying to say.

You can just see the terror in Smoke's eyes 'Hey..there's..no wind Pretze OH GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING'

This is the main problem with the AI in worms games, because they have the aim of god due to being a computer, able to work out the most perfect shots so well it's basically an artform, they've been balanced by making the easier ones being fucking retarded, and the more difficult ones making slip ups now and then that they wouldn't do unless made to.

Jetpack #1

Jetpack #2

I can't think of a good pun to do with smoke, and shotguns. Smoking barrel or something? Ah fuck it, it looks like smoking isn't the only thing that *sunglasses*

Kills.

The grave bounced down right under Pretzels feet.
Maybe I haven't been corrupted by the internet enough, but I find that slightly morbid.

We curl up with Pretzel for some cover from Burger.
That's a sentence I never thought I'd say.
BUT WAIT

Oh shit that's a mine. It looks like Burger's going to fry McJack.

Fuck that was a close one.
Remember kids, wall hug. WALL HUG LIKE FUCK.

Poor stupid fuck is begging for a bazooker to the face.

That happened so fast and so powerfully the best shot I got was this, since the camera doesn't follow the kill anymore or whatever.

That's a grenade on Peter's face right there.
Good thing he has full hp.
But it looks like pretzel has moved away from Peter and the hotdog stand

Looks like it's the final strike for Pretzel, he's about to get salted.

It's like the bombs curved away at the last second to avoid hitting the target dispite being on a dead course for it.
Well, fuck, it might be the end of Peter.

BUT WAIT, MARTIAL ARTS FIGHT!? HOW CAN I REFUSE A CHALLENGE!
I wanted to put a dragon ball z of a stupidly over the top fight scene here.
But I seriously couldn't be bothered to search past the first page on youtube.

PRETZEL STARTS OFF WITH A DRAGON BALL FIRED RIGHT AT PETER, PETER ATTEMPTS TO DODGE BUT HITS THE WALL!
PRETZEL LOOKS SMUG WITH HIMSELF AS PETER WIPES THE BLOOD OFF HIS BROW, AND PUTS ON THE RED BELT.

SHORYUKEN!!

The cry pieces the heavens and causes the air around Peter to burst into flames.
Looks like Pretzel was *sunglasses*

Over cooked.

I gotta say the effect for the fire punch looked pretty awesome.

Job well done. Two kills for Peter, one kill for McJack and Eebrurist.


Let's change some of the teams' settings..

Ancient Rome, sounds long, droll and smug as fuck, talking about glorious rome and hot ass Cleopatra.
The fort is changed to Wicker worm, did I tell you what the last fort was? No.
Do I know what the forts are for? No.

And the helmet is changed to Roman, as well as our title. No more are we crusaders, we're templars now.

And here are our worms.
So far McJack is in the lead with the most kills(which is surprising, being the captain), but Peter is catching up.

Onwards for vict-

Oh. Okay then.

Well that makes sense I guess.
So wait, we just.. fly through the maze..linear corridor which is annoyingly easy, to each magic portal at the end so we win?
I'm playing goddamn worms to get away from shit like that.

zoom...

vrooom..

straight to the moon

...

100 gold for doing fuckall for not even 30 seconds compared to all of the matches before this that took a minor level of skill and ability and took about 30 to an hour to play to gain?
Why the fuck not.

I highly doubt things are going to be difficult, or pose a threat.
Our first target?

Lance.
There's a mine in our way (A MINOR PROBLEM HAR FUCKING HAR PUN) which we skillfuly jump over before it blows our ass up.

Did the wind move?
Huh, neat. I don't remember it doing that during a turn.
Clearly there's one thing we must do

PROD.
PROD FOR THE PROD GOD.
GET READY FOR A DROP!

The most insulting way for a worm to die, by being poked with a finger into a fall.
Then we skillfully..

Fall a bit.
Oh well.

Mead charges up his shot.

A beautiful arc, pity it's going to miss, the wind isn't strong enough to let it hit Peter or Urist.

Peter gets right on it with a jetpack and flies on over there.

I'm not hoping to get drunk, I'm hoping to get him dunk..ed into the water so he can have a drink..of sea water.
Switch out for a new jetpack, and we plant a dynamite

And then fly the fuck outta dodge.

'That is one goddamn nice wall'
Joust on the other side of the map manages to uh, get a bazooka.

To explode an oil drum. They blow up like a bazooka shot when hit and spread fire everywhere.

Ereburist decides to parachute over the fire like he's some kind of dare devil from hell..

If you take damage during your go, it's the end of your turn.

Oddly enough, Mead does the same thing Joust did and blows up an oil drum.

McJack puts on a jetpack
(Not only do I make terribly puns, and shitty wordplay, I also rhyme things too! What did the playground do without me..)
We fly up to the top of the hill and run out of jetpacks

PARACHUTE AWAY
16 seconds you say? I'm sure the parachute will get us there in time.

Oh fuck. Two of my worms right next to the AI's next worm to control while my worms are on a little branch above water?

Quickly switching weapon to the bazooka, McJack aims the weapon perfectly, and in the last half a second of his turn fires it, shooting Joust off into the sea while keeping himself alive.

WORM OF THE MATCH RIGHT THERE.

Whatever floats your boat.

Another pro bazooka shot by the AI hits the land.

The mildly annoyed Peter goes to show Mead how it's done.

It's like darts, but if the darts blew up the board.

Yeah, that's how its done Mead.
Maybe that's the reason Mead is such a terrible shot.
He's been drinking too many shots.
..
..

VICTORY ON WAXWORLD!

McJack got two more kills, and Peter got one.
First balanced-ish match there, both teams had the same number of worms and health, looks like we're outta noobsville now.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Jesus, the AI wasn't that retarded in the first Worms.

Oh well. I look forward to seeing you struck from two screens away by a max-power bazooka shot in a 80º angle against the wind.

 

[Erebus]

Nice job sending Joust out to sea ! I was afraid Ereburist had run out of luck.

The AI in the Worms games I've played has always been a strange mix of artificial genius and stupidity.

 

[Urist McLurker]

It's going to be interesting to complete the campaign, seeing the AI at its overpowered peak, suddenly to go onto the next gamemode with the AI back at stupid level. I expect it to be highly jarring unless the single player gamemodes outside of quick match and custom match are scaled to be played after the campaign..

I came in the series at Worms 2, which I'm fairly sure had retard AI. The AI overall seems better in this one with much of choice in their style of play, and the difficulty of said play, but I haven't had a proper look yet.

The mixture is just as jarring as ever, but I don't remember the low-level AI being so goddamn overpowered with grenades, they've been bouncing them off two seperate bits of terrain after aiming from a quarter of the map away only to have it land right into my worms mouth as they happen to yawn. It's frankly disturbing, must be a new feature of the AI they've worked hard on because even the hard AI wasn't that good with grenades.

Hopefully the fact that mission 7 is the first one for balanced gameplay(albeit the spawn points and terrian were in our favour), and there's like 22 more missions to go will be a good signpost for how difficult it'll get by the end. I expect to end up with one worm called Rambo against hordes of AI on Insane-Master-Very-Vengful setting.

 

[TripJack]

three cheers for lucky jack

 

[Urist McLurker]

Thought we could take a quick look at the shop, what with our new winnings.

Let's start with the hats

Maybe it's just me, but those look shite.
Except the cop hat. Which could lead to many kinky nights of worming.

Personally the creative embodiment of the constrast between the wide worm world what with its globle soundbanks to a diverse degree that is amazing to it's singleminded goal of wiping out all those who disagree with you that is shown via the landscape of Landscape 1 is far nicer than Landscape 6. Which has a far crappier number.

Call me stupid, but this is one thing I don't like about Worms games and generally multiplayer games.
See, Worms is in its best shape as like a party game, it really should just be a console game through and through, the minimal buttons required, the party-like qualities are just begging to be picked up and played while slightly drunk when you've got fuckall to do.
But instead they make it so you have unlock the weapons the series is known for rather than letting you use them straight away.
Maybe I'm just being Butthurt McNickpick but still, it just bothers me that you've gotta unlock and buy these things before you can use 'em for custom maps/custom weapon sets/whatever

Oh. Cool, are there like, 5 more kinds of campaigns you can unlock?

Maybe it's because I played Worms Fort or whatever the fuck that game was called, but I don't like forts in Worms. I get the idea, but it just doesn't sit right with me.

I buy a campaign mission unlock thing to see what it does.

Ooohhhhh.. I was wondering what those missions were for.
Level 31? I would assume that's one level harder than last mission on the trail.

...
So guys, shall we give mission 31 a go, risking losing god knows how many worms in what could be an expert difficulty fight and get our team horribly wiped, or just stick to babby's first medieval setting and get to mission 31 after we've done a few more missions?
I'll leave the vote open on this for a day or two before carrying on if there's no votes for doing the mission or not doing the mission.

Also if anything in the shop took your fancy, like a hat or some shit, let me know and I'll buy it and use it as the next gravestone/fort/hat. Personally I found it a bit underwhelming, I'd rather have soundbanks able to be brought. I always liked getting new soundbanks.

For example that one, Horror from Worms 3D(Which..I actually enjoyed) was a soundbank that you could unlock by doing something stupid or creepy in a graveyard mission, a secret unlock thing.
P. awesome to get it, I recall thinking it was neato at the time. I hope there's things like that in this one, but I don't think there will be.

 

[SCO]

AI is made "dumb on purpose" for those ballistic missile problems, otherwise players would get pissed.

Looks like they forgot the golden rule: don't piss on the player.

 

[TripJack]

Worms 3D(Which..I actually enjoyed)

 

[Urist McLurker]

In my defence, it was an interesting take on the series and the singleplayer was pretty decent in difficulty, it might have been because you couldn't rely on the skills you mastered from the 2D, but the abilities you gained were still useful and didn't feel wasted.

Felt like a challenge without having to make the AI too stupidly over powered. The later 3D games I didn't like though, I suspect the fresh breath of air from having Worms changed even slightly was ruined having more than one of the 3D games.

It's my guilty pleasure that I know if I return to, I'll find out that it was just 'Ooo gimmick' glasses making it worth while, but for the time being I've got fond memories.

 

[Norfleet]

AI is made "dumb on purpose" for those ballistic missile problems, otherwise players would get pissed.

Honestly, the ballistic equations are easy enough to solve using the same slide rule you were using to aim with anyway. This is probably why I am one of the most hated players in this sort of game online. But honestly, I can't imagine how people expect to hit anything at all with such a poor grasp on basic math.

 

[TripJack]

wut

 

[SerratedBiz]

AI is made "dumb on purpose" for those ballistic missile problems, otherwise players would get pissed.

Honestly, the ballistic equations are easy enough to solve using the same slide rule you were using to aim with anyway. This is probably why I am one of the most hated players in this sort of game online. But honestly, I can't imagine how people expect to hit anything at all with such a poor grasp on basic math.

You'll have to explain how exactly you calculate the influence of wind velocity when its not actually portrayed as an specific value, but rather an ambiguous visual cue.

 

[Urist McLurker]

Being able to work out where shots will go by a basic grasp of what you're doing is one thing, then there's the AI shots which can shoot a bazooka through a hole smaller than your worm from the otherside of the map.

Since they have all powerful computing abilities it's no surprise, but it is still pretty rage worth to not only get hit by a bazooka from that far away in such a difficult shot, but for the same shot to curl right as it goes through the gap to hit you perfectly for 45damage, as if getting through the gap wasn't enough.

Also vote you bastards, do you want to do mission 31 yet or wait until we won't get horribly killed.


Edit: SerratedBiz To be fair, because the visual cue is more of a slider with nine settings, <<<< to nothing to >>>> the main worry is getting the perfect timing on the power of the shot, rather than the wind which is pretty easy to work out if you know the power of the shot you're firing. If the visual cue was more arbitrary it would be nigh impossible, but each setting on the wind slider is the same each and every time. It might change between games, I'm not sure, but it won't take two seconds to get good at it again.

While I'm no expert, or remotely good at working things out, I'm capable at doing some AI level shots, and personally the way I do is that I look across the map at my target, look at the wind 'Okay so if I wanna hit them, the angle and speed of the shot would need to be roughly this..' and fire.
Just sort of works out automatically from experience, once you've got a good grasp of the game and basic understanding of how speed and gravity works in the game, you can work out most shots with a small error of fail.
But like I said, some of the shots the AI does is beyond that because they're AI.

 

[Erebus]

Let's try mission 31. I'm sure all of our brave worms are ready to lay down their lives for the sake of our temporary amusement !

 

[Urist McLurker]

Note: On the my first attempt during the fourth minute my cat jumped onto my keyboard and killed my worm via hitting enter + water. I thought about it and decided not to count that as a proper death, and as such restarted. But it's why I slightly knew wtf I was doing for the first couple minutes of this update.

You can just make out where Urist McJack and Red Card spawns, just under the Enemy, not able to be seen is another worm, Joust I think, who's hidden roughly behind the help to out.
There's eight enemy worms against 1 of our worms, Urist McJack.

Urist McJack has 100hp, all of the enemy worms have 75.
Oh Urist McJack, you poor, poor, poor, stupid fuck.

I switch to the blowtorch and give Red Card a right jolly good seeing to.

His mouth shouts no, but his body says yes..

VISUAL METAPHOR

It deals Red 30 damage and we're no longer quite so in the open now. HUUZAH

Haha stupid AI is still stupid.

And time for ROUND TWO, DING DING DING

That's given us a path to the t as shelter, may it serve McJack well.

Hahaha stupi-...

How original. Speaking of original...

FIRST BLOOD

Just in case, I've started on building a way through the A, seemed like the other only thing I could do with the shotgun.

Oh hey there bunched up group of worms, how're you doing?

Did I mention that weapons box from earlier gave us an air strike? No? Well it did.

Let's see if we have better luck this time.

Oo-er. Their worm shot a way through to me. Well, I'm sure the fall damage will end his turn.

Ah well, it won't be his go for another 6 turns or something, so he isn't a threat.

Besides..It's time to test out the bunker buster..
No idea what it does, but I'm hoping it'll be a dynamite but in air-strike form.

It uh, did about 30 damage and blew up as soon as it hit its target.
Buuut it burrowed a bit to reach the target, so maybe it's actually useful and I just used it wrong.

AI tries to bazooka me again, and I go to my shotgun again to deal damage to Lance

And horribly miss one shot, only dealing 25damage to him, but worse than that, his body is no longer blocking the tunnel to me.

Which the AI expliot.
Whoops. Well Urist McJack is now down to 30hp
And we've only killed one of them.

To avoid the risk of falling into the water by a miss-aimed backflip, I ninja-rope myself up

And blowjob outta dodge.

The AI cock up there bazooka shot

BLOW TORCHES FOR THE BLOW..TORCHING..GOD

The AI skip their turn because he's trapped under another one of his worms.

I plant a mine to make sure they don't follow me. And then it's whistles' turn, who's trapped under two worms and also skips a go.

So I start blow torching my way to the edge of the A's leg.

See the weapons' box? That's our target, I dunno what's in it, but I know that getting there I can tunnel my way directly under the four trapped worms there and maybe put a dynamite there or something.

They fire another shot that they don't cock up, but doesn't hit me, landing in the A a bit.

Which Mead promptly claims in the name of France, and I use a bazooka to give myself a landing site to get across the water.

McJack gets ready to fly across
Which goes swimmingly..

As in well. Phew.
The AI cocks about a bit more and I tunnel under them

Just call me Guyrist McFawkes

The AI shows its true colours: NAZIS, FUCKING NAZIS!

The bazooka blows up an oil drum

I reach the box at the end of my turn.. A concrete donkey you say? The greatest weapon of mass destruction in worm games par from super-charging the minigun in worms 2? Oh wonderful.
AI fucks around not hitting me and it'sa my turn and I spot Mead's somewhat unstable spot above the sea..

Bugger.

It's just been Joust's turn? He cocked his shot up but much more interesting is that it means that the AI is now going to control Mead and the three four stoogies..
Yo man..

It's nice to Mead you, but it's..

Chucking out time.

Two worms down, six to go.

I use my second shot to get closer to a way out; I don't fancy risking it the other way.

As expected, the AI is now within the trapped worms and can't do much the fuck else, I take a look at my Concrete Donkey..
In time my pretty, in time..

I blowtorch a way out.

And the AI skips another time.

GO MCJACK BAUER, GO!

13 seconds? Oh yeah. We've been here before.
McJack pulls out a Uzi and goes to town

Oh yeah never bring a lance to a gun fight. 3 Kills.

And I even scored 2 damage on Joust.

Another bazooka attempt fails to hit me.

I use another ninja rope to get up again

And throw a grenade at Joust

Which putts him to my mine..

Four kills. Halfway there.

They're forced to skip a go..

(this was my actual facial expression at the time)

The Concrete Donkey is like an airstrike that hits downwards destroying any and all land in its way, whenever it hits something it blows the land the fuck up with the power of a holy hand grenade.

I'm singin' in the rain

Just singin' in the rain

What a glorious feelin'

I'm happy again

I'm laughin' at clouds

So dark up above

The sun's in my heart..

And I'm ready for love.

I gotta say, I was extremely lucky that they got so fucked over with their own worms near the end, which made two of them useless, and because I was over on that side, the other two couldn't hit me without hitting three of their own worms, and then the other two on the other side of the map were risking hitting four of their own worms, so it was barely 2 v 1, and when I easily picked those two off by knowing the rotation of their playing worms,it was easy: I had the concrete donkey to finish the last four off. The time that mission took was a good way of seeing how much more difficult it was, most of the other matches last what, three minutes. Whereas this one was just over 8 minutes.

I would have used a dynamite to do it if I hadn't gotten the concrete donkey, using the ninja rope to get over there, it just helped to make the ending much more epic and give a proper climax.

 

[Erebus]

Nicely done, especially since the AI wasn't kind enough to blow its own worms up this time !

 

[TripJack]

four cheers for lucky jack

 

[AstralStorm]

I saw this LP and thought there might be an incline, however after seeing the "shop" I flip flopped the sign to point down.

Anyway - add Incline McEpic to the team.

 

[Urist McLurker]

The last match taught me one thing, the soundbank for the romans suck balls, so I'm trying the Stooges out.

I also change the helmet to a Turkish Crusader(????)

Oh joy.

huuur

duuur

:patriot:
I'm not counting deaths or kills when it's forced to happen like this by the way.

With that nonsense out of the way, ONWARDS, ONWARDS TO BATTLE.
We've got four worms, against three with lower hp.
Oh.
We're back to this then?

Here are the enemy worms. Merlin the soon-to-be-not-such-a-happy-goblin there is the first target
I wanna land him on the mine just to really fuck his shit up as well, but not with the shotgun..
Hahaha..no..

We're using dynamite

This is the great thing about worms, when you pull off a shot you wanted to complete perfectly, not only hitting him, the mine, and the oil drum, but just to rub it in, standing right outside the blast range of his death so you tempt damage but take none. If this was against a human in the same room as you, butthurt would be seriously had.
Even with just the AI, you still feel like a total boss for pulling it off.

A cluster grenade onto Urist McJack is sent by Lance

The only other weapon I have at my means that technically can deal enough damage to kill in one hit in, doing the same as a dynamite at 75, but it moves around like a fuckbag jumping over shit and you have to manually blow it up, since makes it a useful, though difficult to control weapon, the main downside is that getting a full 75 tends to be difficult.
So, instead, a shotgun.

Urist McJack, master of hovering. I'm attempting to putt Lance into the flames in an attempt to kill him, I didn't think it would work but it was worth a go.

It only did 3 damage to him before throwing him out. Damn.

Oh shit. Aurist is at the edge of the land, which is literally just outside of the screenshot. The bazooka sends him flying into the water and we lose another worm.
RIP Fourthy, the most murdered and useless of worms.

Ereburist gets right on fucking his shit up in revenge.

And I use the sheep(which is why I rambled on about it earlier), I didn't get a screenshot of it in action because it was such a tight space and I needed to time it perfectly.

Which I did, sending him into the drink.

Oh dear.

Peter has 35 hp left, and is directly behind Lance.
It's Urist McJack's go.

If I don't kill Lance this go, he'll kill Peter, maybe even McJack.
I try to hit Lance and not Peter with a blowtorch, hoping I'll only damage peter to 26hp so he can survive Lance's death.

I fail..Peter McUrist, , proud worm.

Kills: 2 to Urist, 1 to Ereburist,
Deaths: 2, Peter and Aurist.

Ærelian, Peter and Esquilax, if you could reworm yerselves that would be super, 'cause it looks like we're going to start burning through worms now, losing at least one per match. We lost two here due to bad luck which was a shame indeed.

 

[AstralStorm]

What, you missed me, I volunteer to be exploded in the most painful way possible.
Make it then: Epicurist McIncline. (if it fits)

 

[Urist McLurker]

*checks first post*
"Tripjack = Urist McJack Kills: 18
hoverdog = HoverUrist Kills: 0
Erebus = Ereburist McZilch Kills: 2
Lindblum = Purist McKodex Kills: 0


Dead worms:
Esquilax = EsqUrist McClane Kills: 0
Ærelian = Aurist McRelian Kills: 0
Peter = Peter McUrist Kills: 4

Named Worms for the lineup:

SerratedBiz = Son of Sam
dextermorgan = Dexter McLeod
AstralStorm = Incline McEpic
Urist McLurker = Urist McLurker"


Got you listed as Incline McEpic, but I'll try and fit in Epicurist McIncline if you want it changed.

 

[AstralStorm]

Perhaps keep that one just in case.

 

[lightbane]

Add another volunteer as a reserve: JCAskedforthis If that's too long, then: Mr. Bane shall be the name.

 

[Urist McLurker]

Decided to test it, Epicurist McIncline doesn't fit, it gets cut off at the e I'm afraid.

JCAskedforthis fits fine, and has been added to the list.

 

[Urist McLurker]

Yet again I change the sound bank for our worms, still unhappy with the ones I've picked thus far.

New squad, Ereburist and Urist McJack being the oldfags of the team.

What, rather than using my unavailable arsenal to get rid of them?

Here are the targets.
There's a forth one past Hoverurist Yes, it is four worms against our three.

Somehow I cocked up the actual dynamite up and Urist McJack gets shotgunned in dah face

You can sort of see Joust in this one..

King hides behind McJack and Hoverurist gets to work on Joust.

Killing him instantly via water

He uh, threw a cluster grenade at McJack and King.

Ereburist got to work on King, as McJack looks awfully beaten.
Oh, and that green thing with a two above yonder from King? It is a grenade aiming right for McJack.

A worthy death to our best worm, burnt to a crisp via overkill.

I think he took 104 damage in total, to kill a worm with 4.

Hoverurist takes two bites outta Lance

DYNAMITE IN YO FACE

I think he killed himself with that.
And it's time for Ereburist to bring the chaos from his dark black wormy heart

One down, one to go.

Look at that smug bastard cock that shotgun, is it not glorious?

I fire on both Hoverurist and Lance, Hoverurist still has 100hp so he survives with a flesh wound.

Lance however dies, and the match is won.

Kills: Ereburist 2, Hoverurist 1.
Deaths: Urist McJack.