It’s weird what makes the world go round. Everybody has different tastes; I guess that is what makes life interesting, otherwise we would inhabit a very sterile and dull place. As an example, I love rock music. I have done since I was young, and for the last twenty-five years I have played in a variety of rock covers and tribute bands. But I hate the band Kiss with a passion. I see them as a band with an extraordinary talent for putting on a show and self-promotion, but underneath all the razzamataz they have little to offer. Musically and lyrically their songs sound to me as if they have been written by a thirteen year old. I see them as THE ultimate example of style over substance. But still I have a number of friends that like them. Am I wrong? Are they wrong? Or are we all simply entitled to our opinion?

 

I wonder what those friends would think of Cannon Fodder. It was released in 1993 by Sensible Software, the software house that was riding the absolute crest of the Sensible Soccer wave which, after its 1992 release, quickly established itself as one of the most popular and best selling Amiga games of all time.

 

Cannon Fodder is a top down action/strategy war game. You tackle a series of missions, each made up of a number of levels, controlling a small troop of soldiers with your mouse. You have to navigate the landscape by simply using the mouse pointer and left clicking to where you want your selected troops to go, and fight enemies by aiming with the mouse pointer and right clicking to fire their machine guns.

 

You can also accumulate grenades and rockets left carelessly about the levels which, once collected, can be selected when needed and then fired; by again using the mouse pointer to choose your target and then holding the right mouse button and then left clicking to fire. The controls are intuitive and are picked up very quickly.

 

The levels are generally of the Kill all Enemy or Destroy all Buildings type, but there are others such as Rescue all Hostages and Kidnap Enemy Leader. If you lose all your recruits during a mission you have to try again.

 

Completion of a mission sees you progress to the next one with an option to save, but not before a poignant visit to a hill which gradually becomes covered with the headstones of those that have fallen along the way. Those soldiers that survive the mission get promoted before their next foray into battle, improving their accuracy. This becomes a sub-game in itself, while not being any kind of real mission objective you find yourself favouring certain recruits and it is genuinely quite sad when they bite the dust. Those that have played can almost certainly remember the time they lost Jools or Jops; the first two to venture into combat. Some even try to complete the game while keeping them alive throughout.

 

There are 72 levels to play within 23 missions set on various landscapes including jungle, snow and dessert. Each level includes traps and obstacles that you must avoid, such as booby traps, quicksand and rivers that need to be crossed, during which time your troops' movement is slowed and they cannot fire.  

 

Within the confines of a level you have the ability to split your mini army into smaller groups, or ultimately have all recruits acting alone. This gives the advantage of being able to attack on more than one front or using one soldier as a decoy while the others sneak around the back. It adds an element of strategy and becomes essential to progress the later missions. As you make it deeper into the game, you are able to commandeer and use various vehicles, including snow skidoos, helicopters and tanks.   

 

The presentation of the game is magnificent. From the weirdly uplifting War has never been so much fun introduction, to the menu screens, in-game graphics and superb sound effects that accompany each mission, this game is packed with quality touches and great atmosphere. The levels are very crisp and the men, being very small (Sensible Soccer style) allow the scale to be sufficiently zoomed out to give you a good field of view so you can always see where you are going and any approaching danger. 

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However, there are some issues. Firstly, while at first glance it all appears very impressive, I found a lack of proper variety in the missions, with each level being pretty much like the last one. Yes, the landscape changes and you do get the odd vehicle thrown in later on to mix things up, but you quickly become aware that the gameplay really isn’t going to alter significantly. Within just a few missions you have already seen the majority of what the game has to offer. In comparison, Lemmings, another point-and-click game, offers real progression, both in terms of the difficulty level and learning curve.

 

The challenge in Cannon Fodder however is quite random. Some levels are a breeze and then suddenly you will encounter one that is seemingly impossible, and you can quickly lose the will to live. Special mention needs to be given to level 8.1 (assuming you make it that far) which is uber-hard, bordering on the impossible. A recent attempt to play through the whole game saw me have to take over 200 attempts to clear this stage (genuinely), and frankly by the time I had managed it I never wanted to see the game again. 

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The A.I. can also, on occasion, go a little squiffy, since the soldiers always try to walk point-to-point. They won’t automatically self-navigate if something is in their way, so if you click for them to move across the screen and there is a clump of trees between them and their intended destination, they won’t walk around them, but will instead walk into them and get stuck. This is a minor point as they can easily be rescued by click-routing them out again, but it can irk nonetheless.

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And of course playing an A.I. opponent is never as satisfying as a good old fashioned two-player head-to-head battle with a mate. Why isn't there a multi-player split screen option? Had one been included, this review may well have reached a rather different conclusion. 

 

But as it is, ultimately I have to confess that it is not a personal favourite. I recently slaughtered Walker for a lack of variety and in the interests of fairness and balance I should say that Cannon Fodder is nowhere near that bad. In fact it isn’t a bad game at all. In most respects it is a perfectly good game, but it isn’t great. I am often vexed when I see it topping the polls for best Amiga game ever. Off the top of my head I could very easily name twenty or thirty Amiga games that are more fun to play than Cannon Fodder. And isn’t that what it is all about, ultimately? Something can be impressive, but it should also be fun.

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I am well aware that I am in the minority. This is a hugely popular game and it would be wrong for me to pretend otherwise. But I wonder how many that sing its praises have actually tried to play it past the first half-dozen missions. This is a game that I will periodically load up, convinced that I must have been missing something and will be turning off again twenty minutes later, after concluding that I really haven’t. It’s fun in the short term. But once you have picked your way carefully through a ten minute level only to be shot by the last man standing for the third, fourth (or 200th) time (grrrr!) you lose the will to keep playing.

 

So there you have it. It’s well presented. It looks and sounds fantastic. The game mechanics are slick, well thought out and generally everything works extremely well. But... 

 

...underneath it all it’s all a bit samey, at times enormously frustrating and ultimately not actually that enjoyable to play.

 

A confirmed case of style over substance then. A perfectly good game but certainly not great. Many won’t agree with me and that is absolutely fine. But then at one stage the Kiss Army fan-club had over 100,000 members and not one of them is ever going to convince me that Crazy Crazy Nights is a good song…

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Graphics - 90%

Brilliant presentation throughout, clear game graphics and great menus and loading screens.

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Sounds - 86%

The theme tune went down in Amiga history, in game sounds are quite  minimal but are atmospheric and very well done.

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Grab-Factor - 90%

Very easy to pick up and play, the controls are extremely intuitive, the first levels ease you in perfectly.

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Playability - 70%

Not bad by any means, but loses marks for an uneven difficulty curve and samey levels.

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Verdict - 84%

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AG 23/06/2018

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