Cannon Fodder

"Lemmings with Machine Guns"

Strategy games are hard to find on the Jaguar and without actually turning to another system, you really can’t find them. Cannon Fodder stops that completely by giving you control over a group of men and allowing you to send them on a rampage through several different missions. You’ll be able to control what they do, what they carry and you’ll even be able to set up camps and otherwise in order to complete your goals. However, you might find that the lack of constant battle and the waiting that you have to put up with isn’t worth the time or the energy to sit through.

There isn’t much of a story behind this game in which you take control of a group of men who only have one function in life; to die on the battlefield. You’ll be given different missions in which you and your men must complete in order to continue on for world peace, domination or whatever you’re fighting for. What I couldn’t find here was a solid story line to follow during the game, which makes it tough to really get in the mood of fighting. When you’re playing a strategy game, it is generally a good idea to have something that you’re fighting for, rather than some unknown goal!

-The Game Play-

Essentially, you start out with just a pair of men and you send them on missions throughout different stages and environments. You’ll find that you do have some pretty good amounts of ammunition and men in reserve, but until you’ve gotten your feet wet, you can’t have more men out on the field. As you progress through the game, you’ll take on missions that allow you to kill enemy soldiers, blow up buildings and simply dominate the environment with your men. The missions themselves are divided up into stages, with 72 different types of skirmishes and 15 complete stages. All in all, you should have a hell of a time playing through and getting used to the control that you need to exhibit on your men.

Control that you find really isn’t that hard to pick up on, but you’re going to have to learn how to use it effectively. You can work with different squads of men and assign them to perform different tasks while controlling just what it is that they carry. For the most part, you should be able to get through the first five missions with little or no problem, but after that, you’ll need to learn the troop and item management. If you do happen to get your people killed, you’ll quickly find out that whatever they were carrying is going down with them and you cannot recollect it for later use.

Other game play options come in the form of explosives and vehicles that you can use to your advantage. Occasionally, you’ll see that the game simply leaves things out in the open for you to get, but the best part of this is that the computer is actually setting up a trap to catch you in the later stages. You’ll find that the game doesn’t put any sort of emphasis on fairness in later stages and you might end up staring at a game over screen more often than not. With the curving difficulty level that you find, the best course of action is to work in a trial and error style of finding the right stage solution!

-The Visuals-

Visually, Cannon Fodder is a little less on the detailed side, though you will find that the game does have some pretty humorous animations. Usually, you’ll find that the detail of your men compared to the enemy is easy enough to work through, but you’ll also see that you don’t have anything that is too well detailed when your men die. The environments are all well done and the color is effective to show you either snow, forest or desert, but when you start playing on a more frequent basis, it almost seems as it all blends together. One of the coolest visual features is the way that the game allows you keep shooting downed enemies and the blood that sprays up from them as they scream for mercy!

-The Audio-

The music that you find in Cannon Fodder is set way into the background so that you only hear bits and pieces of it, almost like a war movie. Though I really can’t say that I remember much of the game music, the title theme is one that will instill the theme of war into your head and keep you in the game. The sound effects is what really takes the cake though, in which the ambient sounds of the game really make it what it is. In certain areas of the game, you can hear the animals in the forest and the running water of streams or otherwise, which really helps to create an atmosphere before you start opening fire on your enemies!

-The Verdict-

While Cannon Fodder isn’t the most polished strategy game out there, it is the only one that I’ve found on the Jaguar. With the smaller visuals and the interesting sound effect motif that you have at your disposal, it falls into the game play that is both fun and complex at the same time. Although I would want more battle and more fighting in a strategy game, there is something to be said for simply wandering around and killing anything that moves. Worth a look and worth picking up, Cannon Fodder is one of those games that has a strange addictive quality that isn’t easily noticed, but rather grows on you.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/30/02, Updated 09/30/02