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Preview  Worms Blast (GCN)
- By Kevlar Gorilla [Senior Editor]
Worms Blast places a worm at the helm of a tiny vessel armed with a Bazooka. While bobbing back and forth in a deep blue sea, you must aim your weapon at groups of colored orbs suspended overhead. The object is to eliminate the orbs by matching the randomly generated color of your ammo with that of the target.
The concept is similar to the popular puzzler Bust-a-Move, but the challenge of calculating the trajectory gives Worms Blast a complicated twist. When you hold the fire button, your weapon will charge. Too much or too little power and your shot will land off target. It takes practice to aim and charge your shots quickly. Fortunately, an extensive tutorial has been included to help hone your skills.
In addition to the challenge of firing your weapon, you must also pilot your boat to avoid falling objects and collect helpful items. Each of the nine characters handles differently. Items to collect include stars, which lower the water level, and secondary weapons. In your arsenal you will find grenades, shotguns, lasers, and dynamite. Unlike your Bazooka, these secondary weapons have limited ammo.
In Puzzle mode you are introduced to the game through an excellent tutorial. Once you learn the basics you are set loose on a world map full of branching paths. When you complete a specific challenge, you can move on to the next area or return to past levels to improve your score. There are a wide variety of challenges to mix up the action. Some stages will require you to collect stars before you are crushed by falling blocks. Others require you to destroy all the colored blocks on the screen. And in one mission you must dodge a snake by floating back and forth while it slithers around. Other single-player modes include Tournament, in which you choose from a list of rules and attempt to get a high score. Some tournaments will drop you in the middle of a shooting gallery armed with a shotgun; others require you to eliminate lines of blocks to stay alive.
This game will be in stores August 2002. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go polish my nukes.
Updated July 30, 2002
The Worms franchise headed in a new direction at E3 with the debut of Worms Blast for Gamecube.
To be released for both GCN and Gameboy Advance, Worms Blast is a puzzle game much in the vein of the popular series Bust-A-Move.
Basically, you fire colored bubbles into a field of bubbles which are moving down the screen. Pair off colors to get rid of them before the bubbles reach the ground.
The bubbles are all connected, so aiming high can result in dumping bubbles attached below as well.
What makes Worms Blast stand out from Bust-A-Move are subtle changes in the gameplay.
For one, players can move the gun that fires their colored bubbles from side to side. The idea is that you're firing out of a boat and you can travel around because of it.
Another change is that if a bubble launches that is not the same color as what it touches, it changes that bubble to be of a similar color. This adds a new element of strategy when it comes to planning moves in advance.
An even cooler addition to the game comes in the two-player splitscreen mode. During this competition, players compete side-by-side, seperated by a divider.
Interestingly, the divider will recede from time to time, allowing players to fire bubbles to the other player's screen.
Currently, no screenshots are available for either Nintendo version, but we've gone the extra mile and brought in a few stills of the PC version.
Check them out for now, and we'll have more on Worms Blast in the future.
Single Player
Two Player
Versus Screen
- 7.30.2002 |
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