Worms 2

1997 video game

Worms 2 is a 1997 artillery tactical game developed and published by Team17 and released for Windows. It is part of the Worms series and a sequel to the 1995 game Worms. As with the first game, players control their team of worms in combat against each other, using a wide collection of rockets, grenades, firearms, explosives, and air strikes, some eclectic and others bizarre. Also as with the first game, the objective is to eliminate all opposing worms and become the sole surviving team. Worms 2 contains many features inherited from Worms: The Director's Cut, including a level editor and more weapons. It also contains many improvements, of which the most obvious is a completely new visual cartoon style, which has remained for the rest of the series. Other improvements include supported online play and simply new additional weapons and customisation options. It was released to generally very positive reviews, with critical acclaim going to the expanded customisation, the ability to be played over the Internet, a level editor, and the humour. The graphical overhaul was also generally lauded, as was the expanded arsenal, although some reviewers felt that the artificial intelligence was too easy. It was followed by a sequel called Worms Armageddon.

Worms 2 is a turn based tactical game. Players take turns controlling teams of worms across two dimensional landscapes. Worms are randomly placed across the landscape at the start of each level. During a single turn, a player can move only one of their team's worms. Worms can crawl and jump, as well as swing by ninja rope, parachute, teleport, and bungee and a basic level editor which allows the user to create the shape of the level with a brush. Instead of only islands, levels may also be caverns, characterised by an indestructible ceiling and all air strike based weapons being disabled. It was at first meant to be a minimal sequel to the original game with only a new engine and added online play. However, Worms creator Andy Davidson felt that the aforementioned improvements would not be enough to justify a sequel, and he also wanted to bid a farewell to users of the Amiga, which saw waning support and popularity. To do this, Team17 allowed him to spend his time working on Worms: The Director's Cut, an expansion pack to the original designed for late Amiga computers. The two simultaneous Worms projects each had their own separate team. Whilst The Director's Cut would become the last Amiga software by Team17, aside from graphical and memory improvements, it introduced a new level editor and additional weapons such as the Concrete Donkey. Those new features formed the basis for Worms 2, and would appear in later titles of the franchise. The game uses parallax scrolling to display the battlefields and backgrounds. The soundtrack was composed by Bjørn Lynne, and the instruments used are synthesisers, a guitar, and a bass guitar. The game's lead programmer was Karl Morton, who produced the engine. Cris Blyth was responsible for the full motion cutsceneswhich are cel shaded unlike the original game's cutscenesand along with Andy Davidson and Matiné Studios provided the voices for the worms' speech banks. Worms 2 was published by MicroProse on various days across Europe in November 1997, and in North America on 13 January 1998. It was later rereleased on GOG. com on 5 September 2012, with the only difference being that online play is disabled.