Cannon Fodder

The Good
The Gameplay was fantastic. It's a creative, unique, top-down veiw where your little soldier buddies follow you around the terrain while you do your little missions. Most of the time you have to kill all the enemies, destroy a building, ect. It's a smooth control using the keyboard and the keys aren't hard to learn at all. It's a great game for it's time and it's a very underrated.

The Bad
The Gameplay is about the only good part of the game. The graphics are very weak. The Terrain graphics are ok, but the blood graphics look more like red jumbo sized lego blocks spurtin' around. The soldiers you control are "pixelish" in look (not at heart) and when they move, it looks like they grow new legs as they move along. So the graphics are a big suck factor.

The Bottom Line
If you don't mind shabby graphics, and you enjoy a good overhead-view action game, then this is a game you should check out today. Or, tommorrow. Or sometime soon. But, if the graphics suckfactor is a problem for you, then you should go be picky somewhere else (In other words, this game is not for you)

The Good
The Genesis/Mega Drive version of Cannon Fodder was an oddity. A game that was designed for control with a mouse that works with a joypad.

Released in 1994, it had a lot to live up to. The Amiga & PC releases had gone down very well, but the skeptics said it couldn't be done on the consoles. They were wrong. Although it was missing the legendary theme song 'War has never been so much fun' it was still a blast. The digitised version of the song was good enough anyway.

The game is a 2/3 top down shooter where you control a squadron of Grunts to shoot & blast your way through each mission, split into several phases. each with different objectives and parameters. It was a game that required good vision, quick reflexes and a quicker brain.

With the enemy innumerable, the terrain hostile & the natives in the line of fire it made for a game that was testing to say the least. Thankfully though there is a password system, without which the game would be nigh on impossible.

The graphics were typical fare from Renegade & the Sensible team. Miniature sprites that hold great detail. The terrain between on each level looking great too.

The game itself, although of a violent nature, had elements of dark humour which is all part of the fun. You can't help but be amused & bemused at some of the things on show.

The sound was superb & greatly complimented to the gameplay. Although there is no in level music there are subtle sound effects which really add to the tension. But the gunfire sound effects can soon shatter that.

A superb game that was a little on the tough side but excellent to play.

The Bad
The difficulty curve was a tad steep.

The Bottom Line
This is what war games should be like, a blast that doesn't let up.

The Good
This game is a classic...

The most striking thing about this game is it's originality and it's gameplay. The intro is very cool and fun too. In the amiga version the now famous song with the lyrics "War never been so much fun!" made by Jon Hare and Richard Joseph played. The song was however not included in the PC version...a disgrace!!! Instead the PC version has a secondary cartoonish intro which although very cute isn't as cool as the original.

Cannon Fodder is hard to explain...you have to experience it, but I'll try anyway. You are in command of a squadron of 1 up to 8 men. Your objective is to guide these men through a variety of missions where reaction time and tactic is crucial if you want to accomblish them. For example a typical objective would be: "Kill all enemies, Destroy all enemy structures". As you progress in game the objectives increase and get more complex. You often get to man various veicles such as tanks, scooters etc. The game is very extensive and there are tons of missions to complete. You often spend hours trying to complete a mission and loose countless of men doing so...let me tell you, Cannon Fodder isn't a game which can be completed over night. You sometimes have to think very creative in order to complete a mission, and in the last missions you are often faced with a countdown. Your missions extend in different envirorments such as, jungle, artic, urban, desert etc. The graphics are nice and clean, and you can clearly see it was originally developed for the amiga. The sound is average, but the sound when you kill a enemy gets very annoying after a while.

The Bad
The fact that the theme song wasn't the original one...once again...a disgrace!!! Another thing I should mention is the annoying bugs that sometimes occur in the maps, or when you KNOW you hit a enemy, but he blows you to oblivion anyway. Small, but annoying glitches...

The Bottom Line
A challenging and original game which has become a true classic...