Previous Next

Okay, so we've got this game slapped across our cover, it took up an entire coverdisk last issue and we've all been enthralled by Jools' imaginative and innovative use of basic Anglo-Saxon expletives as we've begged and hassled him to write his long-running Diary Of A Game feature. Quite a lot of coverage for a single game, but after spending a worryingly large amount of my time playing Cannon Fodder, I'd say that anything up to and including changing the name of this mag to Cannon Fodder Power would be a justified amount of coverage.

It's fast, it's thoughtful, it's addictive and it's the kind of game that I can see I'm going to be playing through the night like a real saddo. So why don't you join me, and journey through the next few pages as I explain to you why playing this game is now more important to me than eating, sleeping or any other basic bodily function.

Having to write pages of reviews every month, I'm always on the lookout for something concise and snappy that'll end up in the blob on the page [Which is the 'Call Out' technical term fans - Ed] but those Sensible boys have done my job for me. "War's never been so much fun," they tell me, and when you load up the game, you get a pretty groovetastic song that drums the same message home. It's about two minutes long, is reminiscent of an early UB40 track and sets the tongue-in-cheek, boot-in-mouth tone of the game brilliantly. As the song runs, you're treated to pictures taken from the pop video in which the Sensible team dress up as soldiers, run around with plastic guns and pose against a WW2 halftrack. It's all very much in the vein of Oh What A Lovely War, or perhaps the fourth series of Blackadder, and serves as a bit of an antidote to the serious theme.

So boring game details next. The game is made up of 23 missions which are spread over 72 different maps. There are five different terrains - Jungle, Desert, Arctic, Heathland and Underground Base, and although they're fairly well mixed up, there's a definite weighting toward jungle levels at the beginning and underground levels at the end. Oh yeah, the game comes on just three disks, with the last half of the missions coming on disk three. Since it recognises a second disk drive this means virtually no disk swapping while you're playing. Hoorah!

So why buy this game then? Well, for a start it's massively simple to get into. You start off the game with a squad of men, and at the end of every mission, you get a further fifteen recruits, which initially seems a tad excessive. However, by the time you get to Mission Six and your boys are being slaughtered like cattle at every twist and turn, you start to realise why you get so many troops. Every time a soldier survives a mission, he's promoted, and his accuracy, range and rate of fire is increased. You get quite attached to anyone who survives more than a couple of levels, but since everyone in the game has an equally tenuous grip on life, there's inevitably a horrible moment when a rocket with his name on it comes whooshing in and he gets his. The promotion system means that you can end up with a crack team, but it also means that you get terribly paranoid and ever so careful with your men.

You control your boys with the mouse, and click on the left button to move, the right to fire and both to throw a grenade or fire a rocket, depending on what you've selected. You can easily split the band up into sub-groups, which opens up all sort of possibilities. The soldiers can't swim and shoot at the same time, so by sending them over rivers two at a time, you can provide supporting fire from the bank. You can even click a preset course for one group while you control another, which allows you to attack from two directions at the same time. Not only is this easy to work out, but it's so simple that you can do it quickly, which is essential if you want to split the team or switch to rockets when yuo're under fire from tanks and helicopters and all manner of nastiness. The scrolling system works so well that most of the time you're not even aware of it. To look in any direction, all you have to do is move the mouse near the edge and you push the screen, just like you'd imagine it would. If anyone made a dictionary of computer game words, then the listing for 'intuitive' would be "Just play Cannon Fodder and you'll know. Okay?"

Still not convinced yet? Well, the missions involve lots and lots of killing, with the occasional spot of hostage rescue thrown in before masses more killing. Strictly speaking, the missions break down to killing everyone, blowing up all the buildings, rescuing prisoners, taking hostages and protecting civilians, but it all involves killing so many people it isn't even funny anymore.

Complete carnage doesn't impress you? How about four channels of sound that completely immerse you in each world? How about authentic jungle noises with parrot squawks, or the howl of a freezing wind blowing across the broken ice floes? How about sound that reflects what you're looking at on the screen and that fades realistically with distance, making it an essential gameplay feature? What do I mean? Well, if you come out of the jungle (squawks, rustling, etc) and get to a river (running water) but hear distant rotors (whump, whump, whump) then you know there's a helicopter near, and that it's time to hide. Muted gunfire tells you that enemy soldiers can see you and are heading your way, and the flop-sweat fear of hearing a rumbling tank engine has to be experienced to be fully understood. And if that doesn't get you, then stirringly patriotic WW1 jingles as you complete each mission or a Jimi Hendrix-esque rendition of the last post as you remember your dead are sure to knock your ear-socks off.

Thinking that it sounds like 72 maps of pretty much the same thing? Wrong! Although you start off the game with a fairly simple run-around-and-shoot-everything approach, you quickly cotton onto the fact that this tactic only works for the first few levels, and that a bit more finesse is required for later levels. By the time you get to Mission Seven, many of the levels are puzzles in the Lemmings mould, and successfully completing the level depends as much on you planning ahead as it does on your reactions. How exactly do you get past the helicopter, evade the gun turrets, blow up the bunkers and then blast down the stockage wall so that a civilian can escape to his house? Well, take it from me, it's hugely difficult and involves a tank.

Yes, tanks! And skidoos and jeeps and helicopters firing heat-seeking missiles. Whatever fearsome vehicles the bad guys have got, then at some point in the game you get to drive them as well. Many of them heaven't got a weapon, but that's no problem as you can just drive over people, and whenever you find a ramp, then rest assured there's lots of Dukes Of Hazzard tomfoolery to be had.

Hey, I just mentioned civilians, which are another feature to keep you guessing. There are cute little eskimos in the arctic, natives in the jungle and even moseying gunslingers in the desert, but you never know how they're going to react. Some of them are neutral and just wander around, some of them are hostile (in which case they deserve everything they get) but a lot of them are reactive, so if you kill any of them, they'll open up on you.

You want more before you buy this game? Blimey, how much? Okay, how about hyper-intelligent baddies in helicopters who'll track you in the open, but can be evaded by hiding in the treeline or holes? How about a completely interactive terrain, so your troops bounce over every bump, slide across every ice floe, fall down every cliff and even sink in the swamps? It's another incredible game feature, since you can blow down fences, since you can blow down fences with grenades and destroy huts with explosives, but you've got to look out for bits of debris as they fly off in all directions. You've also got to keep a look out for suspicious lumps in the ground as many of the levels are littered with lethal booby traps of all descriptions.

And you want blood? Good, 'cos Cannon Fodder's got masses of it, with each little guy blowing apart in a hail of gunfire, or lying around moaning and squirting after a spring-loaded spear has shot out of the ground and impaled him. And then there's the... Oh, just go and buy the flipping thing.

So... you've waded through four pages of top-quality pictures and masses of praise for this game, and no doubt you'll have noticed that there's something missing - criticism. The simple reason for this is that I can't find anything wrong with the game. "In which case," smart arses out there are going to say to me. "Why haven't you given it 100% then?" Right, here are a few reasons why:

1. It's got a finite number of levels, and even though 72 maps are going to take you ages and you can keep going to take you ages and you can keep going back to them to try out different ways, there's going to be a time when every level is too easy for you. Eventually.
2. It's only a one-player game, and two's always better than one. This rule applies to everyday life as well.
3. Even though it's brilliant, I can't believe that it's the best game that's ever going to be made, so we've got to leave a few marks for when the ultimate game finally gets round to appearing.
4. Not even real life is worth 100%. Yeah, think about it.

Uppers: Everything.

Downers: Nothing.

Buy it.