Cannon Fodder

"A challenging game, maybe too challenging"

From what I've heard this game was ported over from an old
Atari game, I wasn't gaming around then so I wouldn't know. After
reading a review from IGN that raved about this game I considered it.
After 2-3 weeks I caved in and bought the game.

Graphics: 8/10
Lush terrain, nicely animated sprites, superb graphics. Why
did it only get an 8? The soldiers are too small and the terrain
easily hides deadly things that are supposed to be clearly visible.
You'd be pissed off too when you realize that you just lost 2 soldiers
permanently because of some stupid background graphic. You'd also want
to see your soldiers are there's incoming fire, camouflaged enemies
and one shot kills them.

Sound: 7/10
There is no background sound during gameplay, at least little
to none. Just as well, the background sound would interfere with the
voices of the soldiers. You need to hear the oncoming fire and the
voices when you hear the enemy. The explosions, voices and whatever
background music is in it sound fine except they keep recycling the
voices and it does get annoying.

Controls: 9/10
I find nothing wrong with the controls. Press A and the
soldiers walk to the crosshair, press B and they shoot at the cross
hair, press select to select your secondary weapon, hold B and press A
to use your secondary weapon. The soldiers respond pretty well to
these controls except there's always the time where they react too
slow and get mowed down by incoming fire.

Gameplay: 6/10
This game just gets more and more boring as time progresses.
There's almost no variety in the missions, all of it is just kill
this on this terrain. The game keeps track of the soldiers you have
and how many kills they have. Once one of them dies, that's it, you
can see him at the cemetery and you're down one soldier. This means
that everything you do will ultimately effect how the final battle
will be. That's cool and all except for the little fact that the
missions are hard past a certain point and you will lose a lot of
soldiers for no reason. At the end of every mission you'll get new
recruits though but you still have to manage them or you'll run out of
soldiers and it's game over.

Replay: 3/10
There is no damn replay. Once you beat the game I don't think
you even want to touch the game again. I didn't even beat the game
and I'm tired of it. It gets too hard and there's no variety in gameplay. The only possible reason to play this game again is to
end up with a higher amount of reserve soldiers.

Buy or Rent? Rent, if you like it, Buy

Averaged score: 6.6
Overall score: 7

I've beaten many NES games without much of a problem but this
game is impossible. There's always that soldier or trap that you
can't see and kills your soldier before you can react. I don't know,
maybe it's because I want to lose as little soldiers as possible the
first run through the game. That's only my opinion though, you might
like this game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/20/01, Updated 06/20/01