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Free Duel, Oh This Hot Seat Of Ours
Round Two, Act Two: Cute Animal Carnage
Act two replaces no setting, we're still side-viewed and I guess still in a cave of sorts - but the actors have been replaced. No rocket fuel, no v-shapes.. but the poor pilot from V-Wing has been given the starring role.
Dressed up in an animal costume.
In Molez, a mole suit of course. Up to four players are stashed into one static screen, this means no split-screen and all the level can be seen as once. Molez displays in high SVGA resolution, so it's not bad at all. It can become a bit claustrophobic but at times it just adds some fun panic-inspired action.
The animals are given a heavy load of different guns, a grappling hook and a shovel. They fire their weaponry, including raffles, explosives, a plasma gun and even poison gas to directions of 360 degrees. At first, the playfield consist of dirt, a few indestructible rocks and some open space. Our shortsighted animal friends then dig the ground to get to each other, not for a caring embrace but a caress of steel, or lead, or shrapnel. Explosives are often used for a fast dig, and shovels are every now and then used to whack the adversary in close range to spare the ammunition - too bad there's no macabre shoveling animation for this. As the battle rages on, respawn after respawn, the arena is slowly clearing of anything destructible, leaving rocks covered in rodent blood and the moles ducking (quack quack) behind them, for this is the time when one of the funniest weapons, the sniper riffle begins its service.. All in all, the fun you can have identifying with little mammals properly armed for a massacre is all fine and dandy for a while..
But in the end, Molez does lack that something, thus it's time to ask..
..if you're reminded of Worms? In Liero, you do control a worm hungry for kinsblood, hmm, cannibals, a vampire perhaps, though worms do not have teeth, so they really couldn't be armed to teeth, but then they don't have arms either ZAT! Oh, sorry about that. Cough.
Liero overcomes Molez's weak points hands down, so it's easy to forget that only a two-player game is available. There are a lot of weapons, and while most of them are variations on the "bullets and explosions" -theme, here's enough real variety to be content. The weapons are generally more satisfying (i.e. bigger explosions) than in Molez. Also the ninja rope plays like the one in Worms, which is more fun than the Molez version. Graphics are rougher, but brighter, cartoony even. And, most importantly, the arena is huge-ish, giving you enough room for maneuvers and strategies and especially to escape if and when need arises. In Molez, this is quite much harder.
On the other hand, if you'd like to dress like a bunny, try Jump'n Bump. No weapons, just up to four cute bunnies trying to jump on each other. I'd almost say, that this could be the weapon-free little competitive game for everyone tired of violence in video games, if the bunnies didn't burst in a blaze of gore when taking a hit. Oh well. At least they're cute.. and the game hilarious. As the game is also open source, the original DOS version has been ported to Win32, Linux and BeOS.
Similar to the Luola project, there's a game in development called NiL isn't Liero. Gameplay of Liero with more than two players - over internet - now that doesn't sound bad at all!
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