gusanos

Game: Gusanos

 

Gusanos with the Doom mod and a lot of bots

Gusanos Review

Liero was sort of the "original" Gusanos game, a real-time Worms-type death match game. It's an old freeware DOS game and the sound doesn't work on XP and the graphics are pretty bad but it was a blast to play. Liero was extremely popular and inspired many clones, or similar games. The best of these is Gusanos. Not only is it as good as Liero, it's much, much better. But if you want to play the classic you can download Liero too. There. Now that that's out of the way I can tell you what Gusanos is all about.

Gusanos is a real-time Worms-type death match game. If you've ever played any of the Team 17 Worms games you already know what I'm talking about. If you haven't then in Gusanos you play as a wee little worm. The wee little worm has lots of huge weapons that blow big holes in the ground and the other worms. Basically you blast at the other worm (your friend) and try not to get killed. It sounds pretty run of the mill but it's made better with...

Features

Rating

Graphics

***** - The actual sprites are not that great and the resolution is really low but the excellent particle and lighting effects more than make up for it.

Sound

***** - Generally good. Some sounds are edited versions of Doom sound effects and other such games. Some are from the game Moles. No music. You'll have to play iTunes in the background.

Gameplay

*****- I've rarely seen better. Go flying faster than the bullet chasing you with a jump pad, swing around on your ninja rope, snipe from the dark, duel with light sabers, dodge exploding bananas, it's all there. (With the mods. Without them it's boring.)

Difficulty

***** - Good computer AI for the most part. The AI has superhuman accuracy and only occasional kills itself. It usually doesn't get stuck walking into a wall but sometimes it happens. It takes most people a little while to get used to the controls. (Explained in the help section below.)

Replayability

*****- Well, I've sure played it a lot! If you can't find a friend it's not nearly as much fun playing against the computer. And there's no story or features to unlock. But the incredible fun of zilching your friends will keep you comming back. If you ever get sick of the weapons or maps you're using download a new mod and play some more!

OVERALL

9.9/10

(This rating is not cumulitive of the other scores)

Pros: Great fun with a friend. Very pretty effects. Good computer AI. Overly destructive weapons. Fun ninja rope. Many mods and add-ons.

Cons: Old looking sprites. Need to install mods for best game experience. Need to edit text files to change controls and other settings.

The only thing holding Gusanos back from a 10/10 is the time it take to download the mods and fix the controls up so that you can get into the game and have a blast.

Help

Controls

Aim up: Up

Aim down: Down

Move left: Left

Move right: Right

Fire button: Fires weapon

Jump button: Jumps

Change weapon: Hold the change weapon button and tap left or right to cycle through the weapons

Ninja rope: Hold the jump button and the change weapon button to fire your ninja rope. Aim it with the up and down buttons, like aiming a weapon.

Dig: Hold the direction you want to dig in and rapidly tap the other. Example: To dig left hold left and tap right.

Changing the controls

Go into wherever you've installed Gusanos to and open the Default folder. For example: C:\Gusanos\Default\

Then open Config.cfg with notepad or some other text editor.

It's in the format BIND(Insert button you want)+P0_(What the button will do)

Both Player 1 and Player 2's controls are in Config.cfg and they both are edited the same way.

Using mods

The best place to find Gusanos mods that I know of is the Gusanos forum under Gusanos modding. There are also a lot of mods at the polish Gusanos site.

Unzip the mod you downloaded into the Gusanos folder. Run Gusanos and press the ~ button. (The ~ button is just left of the 1 button and above the Tab button) This opens up the command menu. Now type in game(Name of the folder that the mod is in) and press enter. Load a new map and if all goes well you should be playing a mod.

Adding computer players

Run Gusanos and start playing in a level. Press the ~ button. (The ~ button is just left of the 1 button and above the Tab button) This opens up the command menu. Now type addbot and press enter. This will add a computer player or "bot." Repeat to add more bots. I think you can add as many as you want. If you add to many it will slow your computer down.