A little while ago, that friendly BR.com rater known as LuckyNewbie (as well as other things, some not quite so flattering) posted a link to a little file on the forum. Said file was a game. Not by any means a new game, with flashy 3D graphics and lighting effects, or awesome cutscenes, or whatever. There were by no means realistic explosions or sharp images. It was a pretty simple, small file in which two heavily pixelated invertebrates fought to the death.

Using stuff that blows up violently.

That last one had me addicted in a second, of course. I make no claims to be so cultured that chess is sufficient excitement for me.

So seeing as I had given up SC (*dodges tomato*) a while before, and seeing as this game, in which I merely commanded a mindless worm to blow up an equally mindless worm using a variety of guns and explosives was so damn fun, I figured I'd do a report on it.

Liero, as LN puts it, is "like worms, but in real time and split screen-action." Hence the big black line through the title image. The worms look remarkably like they do in Worms, except they're significantly more pixelated, and no matter what you're using, the gun looks the same. Also, you get to pick your worm's color in ways Worms could only dream of; Liero uses an RGB system which maxes at 60 something, for whatever reason. This however gives you tons of control over your worm's color, which while not really useful for anything at all, is really freaking cool.

A note on my configuration: in Liero when you start up the game, both worms can pick five weapons. Of course, if you leave everything as it is in the default settings, this means that you can pick any weapon in the game as one of your initial weapons. I found a minor problem with this when I randomly got a laser and was able to kill my opponent simply by making sure there was plenty of dirt between us and just lasering him to death through the dirt. I got a bunch of kills before he starting explosives spamming to the point where he could easily unload on me. I still managed to win. Because of this experience, almost every weapon is set to pickup only. This means that you can only get stuff like the laser when it randomley spawns in a weapon crate somewhere on the map. You can pick from a few decent weapons (the usual initial weapons fare; nades, pistol, bazooka, blah blah blah) and from that point have to rely on crates to get anything better. This means that the awesome weapons don't usually hit the scene for a while, but also that the game isn't won on a weapon early on.

Since I have no friends, I have to play against the comp. Of course, like in every other game in the world, the comp sucks, so I give it a little boost by making it have tons of health. I also make him navy and call him "Bob the Grand Hoopah." I give myself orange and call myself "Hysterical Jim." Bob has 180% health to my 100%, so he can take a good deal more punishment than me. I set the game mode to "Kill 'em All!", with 50 lives to each worm, and randomize my weapons, making sure I have grenades.

Kill 'em All is essentially the classic deathmatch mode, except instead of tallying kills, it tallies death. Therefore, the all too frequent suicides essentially count as kill for the other player.

The first few minutes of the game prove exceptionally dull, with the high point being Bob not being capable of realizing there's a ton of dirt between the two of us and unloading shotgun rounds into the adjacent wall in hopes of hitting me. His health dropped about 30%. I continued to use my Flamer (obviously a flamethrower) to burrow around, looking for a weapon pickup to replace my dinky handgun. The one advantage the handgun does have is a laser sight, which I tend to use more to sight ninja ropes than anything else. I eventually run into a weapon pickup but it turns out to be one of the ones that randomley explodes in your face. Two more respawn, the first being a bazooka, which I already have, and the second being a Bouncy Mine. I bouncy mine the surrounding area for kicks and suddenly hear the telltale sound of grenade deployment. Looking at Bob's screen, I see that he's loaded the little hole he's in with grenades. The resulting explosion gives him a death, and provides for a pretty picture.

Bob respawns and beelines to the huge cavern that he's created, which is incidentally where I am right now. He catches me mid laying of bouncy mines and grenade spams me, killing the both of us. While not a wonderfully effective tactic, it does have the wonderful effect of clearing up the area. Using heavy explosives early game has this wonderful effect; late game tends to make precision fire weapons a bit easier to use, seeing as there's no worrying about twisty paths, although the same applies for thrown weapons. Also, weapons such as mines become rather deadly late game, as mine spamming the flat bottom leaves very little room to respawn without getting blown to high heaven.

Bob, in another display of intellectual superiority, begins to hammer the rock in front of him with bazooka shots in hopes of hitting me. In my little respawn hole, all I've managed to do is lay a few mines, when he knocks his health into near nothingness then empties a ton of explosives onto the rock. Rocks, in case you hadn't guessed, don't ever go away. Even with 50+ explosives on them. I watched on Bob's screen as blood sprayed across the cavern as the explosives went up. Unfortunatley, I didn't get a picture of his untimely demise, so you'll have to settle for one of him trying to kill me through a rock. Lives at this point: 49-47.

More of the same next respawn, although in my burrowing out of my hole, I suddenly remember that bouncy mines have no friends. I retreat a bit into my hole and begin unloading shotgun shots, hoping that something will hit Bob without me having to actually leave my little hole. However, somehow in the course of all this, the mines I accidently laid in the respawn hole get released and bounce into me. My health falls drastically and suddenly Bob drops onto the scene, with another host of grenades in my face. The upside to all this? I score the first kill with a well placed shotgun shell to Bob's ugly mug. Hysterical Jim > j00, lolz!

Bob kills himself again, for whatever reason. Then, as I'm ninja swinging across the cavern, I see that Bob is under me. I unload a few shotgun shells down, but because you can't aim straight down in Liero, it's all in vain. Bob responds with nade spammage, but not to the point that he can't get away. The cavern is filled with little green pixels that hurt us both, but kill neither of us. I manage to swing into a little side cavern, but Bob is still int he middle of things. As what's presumably shrapnel and all of my bouncy mines hammer down on him, he readies his generic gun, aims at me, and prepares to kill himself again. I ready my grenades, as it's time to fight fire with fire.

Clearly Bob is affecting me. All but one of the grenades lands at my feet, and I die in a spectacular burst of flame, shrapnel, and worm gibs.

Not to be outdone, Bob gets himself down to critical health an then covers the floor of the main cavern where he's standing with little green balls. I can almost hear him saying "This is how you're supposed to do it, idiot!" as the grenades explode and drop his life count down one more.

While avoiding Bob and letting him do the dirty work is a viable strategy, I decide that I've at least got to try to fight the idiot. I ninja rope up to the top of the cavern, near where he's respawned (towards the upper right section of the map) and unload a few bazooka shots. The unfortunate thing is, I manage to accidently change my weapon to bouncy mines halfway through, and in unloading a few of those, seal my fate. The first hammers into me, spraying blood into the opposing wall swinging me forcefully backwards, right into the path of a second. Critically wounded, I can do naught but release the rope and fall into a third mine. The final explosion is enough for poor Hysterical Jim, and red pixels spray across the cavern.

We both kill each other in a round of explosive combat that's really pretty damn silly. Essentially, we're nose to nose, I'm unloading bouncy mines into Bob, and Bob's unloading simple explosives into me. Immediatley afterward, we both respawn, and I start trying to be Neo or something, swinging around from the ceiling. Bob pulls out his handgun and starts shooting at me, and I return bazooka fire. One of the shots explodes in my face (my timing sucked and I shot a rock) and the rest miss, so I drop down to where aiming is slightly easier. Bob, predictably, grenade spams, and I die. He then, in some sort of victory dance, sprays grenades up like a fountain of green. I hope I don't need to tell you what happens next.

Perched upon an incline on the left wall after the next respawn, I whip out my shotgun and start taking potshots at Bob when he decides to show me his new gun. Chaingun bullets hammer into the ground around me, but a hail of grenades puts an end to that. Bob respawns and advances again, this time dodging bazooka fire, and getting hit twice. He rains bullets into my perch, disentigrating it and dropping me to the cavern floor (there's now a definite floor on the map, most of the center having been eaten away by Bob's grenades) and after some brief grenades I whip out my trusty shotgun and put an end to his life. I'm pretty badly hurt though, and he's respawned just across the cave from me, so I can expect a rather quick loss of life.

Or maybe not. Bob gets me critical with a spray of chaingun fire but not even the hardiest of worms can take four bazooka shots to the face. Bob is reduced to a spray of blood, and I stand with about 5% of my maximum health, waiting for him to drop down and actually manage to kill me. I swear, if he sucked any more, he'd be a black hole and we wouldn't have to ask Steven Hawking about them anymore.

He lands, unloads about four bullets into me, and I gib onto the wall behind me. I respawn and repeat the whole bazooka spam process, killing Bob again. However, this time it is what Mortal Kombat might call a flawless victory; I try to pick up a nearby healthpack to heal whatever damage stray chaingun bullets must have done to me and find that I can't, as I'm at max health. I celebrate by unloading a bazooka shot into the air, and the resulting shrapnel hits the health pack, making it explode into me. I am such a moron.

On Bob's next respawn, he drops down from above, getting hit by a bazooka shot on the way down. He manages to land on a rock that's in front of me, and does the classic Bob the Grand Hoopah move: emptying a ton of grenades into the ground in front of you. The little worm chunks go flying across the map with the massive amount of blood that they contained (I have blood set to 500% for your viewing pleasure, by the way) and I take minimal damage from random bits of shrapnel flying around the room. Current life totals: 43-36 in my favor.

I do my spiderman thing and ninja rope across the map in an effort to get to his other side where I can easily shoot him without worrying about the huge rock in the way taking some of the fire, when Bob proves that he's not a complete moron and hammers me with a bazooka shot. My return shotgun fire ends up hurting me because the force of the bazooka sent me flying behind a rock. I decide it's about time to drop down and show this worm who's boss. I land and am greeted by a flurry of grenades. Hysterical Jim says a very bad word and then his blood is sprayed all over Bob, and Bob does his victory grenade thing again and somehow lives.

I then manage to pull the coolest move ever. Remember, if you will, back when Mortal Kombat first came out (yeah yeah, I already made the allusion to it, shut up) and if you played Scorpion he had that hot harpoon move that would pull the other guy towards you? In Liero, if you aim your ninja rope right, you can attach it to the other guy instead of to the wall. I did so, pulling poor Bob towards me, where he unloaded about 50 grenades into the little pocket of dirt I was in. Well, it was cool while it lasted, anyway.

The next life is pretty dull, with me unloading some bouncy mines into me, then unloading some bouncy mines into him, then watching us both die, then asking why I couldn't have a cool weapon like the Missle instead of these god damn bouncy mines. Since only a third or so of them exploded in his face, the cavern floor is now teeming with the fuckers, so respawning will be kind of annoying.

I respawn up in a little hole in the wall, and peacefull stay there, watching Bob bounce around as he gets hit by bouncy mines. His life count drops to 29 before he finally manages to get a bazooka shot into me, and dies promptly to another bouncy mines. Hey, maybe these things aren't so bad...

The next few lives consist of me dying to my own bouncy mines. Lives: 38-29, my favor. I hate mines.

I let Bob kill himself nade spamming my spawn before I respawn, but he drops down and nade spams again. I manage to get a really kinky shotgun shot in, but in the end, grenades are grenades. The mass of green balls erupt around me, spraying Bob with my blood. I'm surprised he isn't purple by now, but I guess he gets cleaned off each respawn. I decide to play it safe on my next life, and rope out of the way, getting chased by bursts of weapon fire all the way to the top of the map. I suddenly see a gift from god...weapon crates. Some fancy dodging and roping later, I replace my bouncy mine with a dirtball, which fires a small brown sphere that makes a sound not unlike the sound most of you make after eating beans, then generates an area of dirt. I land on the bottom of the map, and trap poor Bob in a prison of mud. He, true to form, nade spams the thing, and I encase him in as much dirt as possible. While dirt takes a healthy amount of the damage (as does Bob, being right next to the grenades), I'm sent flying across the map. At least I'm still alive.

Then I manage to get stuck in my own dirt prison. The annoying thing about Liero is that weapon fire starts a bit in front of your worm, so while I could ostensibly shoot, I couldn't shoot the dirt away. Bob of course takes advantage of this by covering me in green balls that explode very shortly thereafter. More of the same follows, except the second time around I pull a Bobesque tactic and nade spam from the dirt. Lives are now 35-25.

Bob hammers me with shots from his arsenal, and I swing down to force him to the ground. Shotgun shells whiz through the air, a healthy portion of mine slamming into Bob, and a healthy portion of his slamming into me. He finally drops down, and we trade a few more shots, when the battle ends like all battles do in Liero.

You guessed it, grenades.

Next respawn I get myself stuck in dirt again, but this time Bob is below me and there's a rock between us. I send a few grenades down at him, reducing him to critical health, then drop down to engage. He fires his shotgun at me, but I manage to avoid the shots, pulling out my bazooka and unloading a few at him. Thus far, shrapnel is the only thing damaging either of us. I grab a crate, hoping to replace my dirtball with something spectacular, but get only a second flamer for my troubles. Great, now I have no special weapon. I lift out of there, unable to hit Bob due to the abundance of rocks below, and get out the explosives.

When all else fails...

He dies once, with me swinging around on my rope and hammering the ground below with grenades, but by the end of the second time, I'm practically dead, dangling by the rope from the ceiling, and hoping that I'll be able to kill him with my bazooka without taking any damage at all. I recite a short prayer and switch weapons. To no avail of course, he's directly below me and I can't aim down. Suddenly, a health pack appears right beside him. I drop down, hoping to grab it and skedaddle out leaving only an explosion to remind Bob of me. Of course, as I land, he covers the ground with explosives. I haven't the health to weather this, and even though he takes most of the blast, a single pixel of shrapnel kills me. Rather unrealistically, I explode all over the place. Whatever, it looks cool.

Another round of flawless bazooka kills, and then Bob drops down for a hectic firefight. He's got his pistol, I've got my bazooka, and we're taking potshots at each other like it's OK Corral all over again. Without the livestock, of course. He nades, and I rope the hell out of there. He somehow manages to survive the explosion, and so I drop down again and unload another shot into him, when he catches me with a shot and kills me dead. His health is rather critical, though, so this next life should be spent killing him.

Bob Winchesters me a few times, and I'm left wondering when he picked it up. The Winchester is a solid gun with good accuracy and awesome bullet speed. It doesn't have the laser sight, but the velocity of the bullets makes up for it. Normally you can dodge shots if you keep your head on and don't panic, simply by jumping or moving as nessecary, but the Winchester sends bullets at you at such a fast speed that you'd have to have the hand speed and reflexes of a progamer or a 30 year old who's never been on a date to dodge the bullets. Not having either of these, I take a healthy amount of damage before I rope out and switch to my bazooka. Dangling from the ceiling, I note that Bob has his handgun out now. The wonderful thing about having your opponent use the handgun is, while it lets them aim perfectly, you can line up your shots with it as well. Bob takes a bazooka shot to the teeth and promptly expires all over the cavern floor.

I noticed a crate just above Bob, and trade my extra flamer for it just as it's about to vanish. Woohoo, Chiquita bomb. This gun is what we like to call a blatant rip. Remember the banana bomb from Worms? The Chiquita bomb is the exact same thing, Chiquita being one of those banana companies. I hammer Bob with some potassium rich fruit and grin. He doesn't die, but it's really funny seeing pixelated bananas. The second shot from the Chiquita bomb brings swift and painful death to poor Hysterical Jim and pisses me off because Bob survives it. Ah well.

Bob does the kill-us-both-with-grenades gig again, and then I let him blow himself away trying to preemptivley take out where I'm spawning before I bother to respawn. I now have an 11 life lead, with the scores being 30-19. Bob reduces it to 10 with some spiffy grenadage that I do a terrible job escaping, roping deeper into the mass of grenades rather than far far away from it like I'm supposed to.

I then Chiquita bomb spray Bob. The result is a lightened screen covered in bananas, and a very dead blue worm. I take a healthy amount of damage too, dangling from the wall in the middle of all this, but I manage to survive it. I decide to look for bonus weapons now, seeing as I want something powerful that doesn't involve blowing up half the map. I leave Bob a present of Chiquita bombs, but a few decide they'd rather come with me, and I die spectacularly shortly thereafter.

A few ownages of Bob via bananas later, I'm fighting him on the floor of the cavern when a weapon crate appears. I quickly grab it, replacing my bazooka, and find myself graced with the rifle. The rifle is a wonderful weapon, being basically a majorly pumped version of the handgun. It has the laser sight, and on top of that does an exceptionally high amount of damage. Well perched, I can snipe Bob to death with this thing. I rope up to a better location and ready my gun.

I snipe him from above, reducing his health, then get hit by his Winchester. Dropping to the floor again, I set the sights of the rifle to be just above the rock on the ground that's obstructing our shots of each other. Bob moves to go over the rock and shoot me, but gets shot for his trouble. A hollow voice says "HEADSHOT!" as blood sprays against the wall. Bob drops down to the ground in front of me, and before he can even adequatley aim, he's hammered by a rifle shot and dies yet again. He then spawns above me, and I aim straight up, firing one shot through the dirt between us, and firing the second into him. I'm rewarded by a shower of blood and body bits from above.

The game is essentially over. Wherever Bob spawns, and however many shots he fires, he eventually finds himself in my sights and a few seconds later, dead. His last 12 lives go down the drain purely to rifle fire, and as I unload the last shot, the screen fades to black. Victory is mine.

The game wasn't really the best, but then it's hard to get a good close game against the Artificial Stupidity that runs the enemy worms. Hopefully I managed to convey the gameplay to those of you who haven't played it yet (and suck up to LN as well ^_^), and also entertain the masses. +5 bonus points for any allusions you get that I didn't blatantly point out. Also, special thanks to mattz for helping me iron out the countless coding errors in the BR. Use that scanned 500 well, mattz. I guess that's it for now; adeiu, oh readers.