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It feels like way too long since I last looked at anything by Sensible Software ñ hell,
itís been over a year. Since my four-part series on Sensible Soccer ñ which does happily
remain one of my best-loved sets of vids, and many thanks for that ñ Iíve barely mentioned
them! They were wonderful developers ñ a small, closely-knit team, with a sense of
camaraderie that was no doubt hardened through many nights of drinking guest ale in the luxurious
vistas around Saffron Walden. And of course, making games that had more personality and
were just flat-out more fun than just about anything else ñ Sensible Software didnít
make all that much in the end, but almost everything they made ñ at least in their
prime period ñ was classic. This puts them way ahead of, say, the Bitmap Brothers ñ
to use another bunch of British Amiga developers who get covered a fair bit on this here channelÖanyway,
letís revisit Jools, Jops and company, and look at perhaps their second best-loved series
of games.
First up, a quick recap to show how we got here: In 1991, Sensi made Mega-lo-Mania, a
real-time strategy game where you controlled lots of little sprites and got them killing
each other with increasingly more elaborate weapons. The little sprites gave Sensi an
idea, and they designed a primitive football pitch in Mega-lo-Maniaís engineÖthis would
be the inspiration for Sensible Soccer! And we know all about that. From that game onwards,
little people became a Sensi trademark, and the next step was to stick them into another
war game! But this one would be different ñ youíd be right there in the thick of the
jungle, controlling a small team, dodging enemy fire left right and centre...youíd
be a merry band of brothers. Hell, youíd even be playing as Sensible Software themselves!
You wouldnít have much hope of surviving, but thereíd always be a new bag of meat ready
to jump through the door and take your placeÖand so, Cannon Fodder was born. And released in
1993, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
It was pretty freaking provocative at the time ñ some complain about games that make
political statements these days, but Cannon Fodder was doing it 20 years ago ñ itís
comparable in spirit to something like, say, Spec Ops: The Line. It opens with one of gamingís
most iconic songs, ìWar Has Never Been So Much Funî ñ a lazy yet threatening and utterly
insistent *** that never quite leaves your head. The soldiers line up to be punted through
a door and into battle, their eagerness contrasted by the hill that overlooks them, which as
the game progresses will become lined more and more with the gravestones of the fallen.
Itís a big, harsh, anti-war streak that runs all the way through ñ even in the game itself,
when youíre spending most of the time peppering enemies with lead, youíre frequently confronted
with the sight of enemies slowly bleeding out after you shoot themÖitís not pretty
at all. The ground is splattered with caustic British irony ñ war is not, has been, and
never will be fun. And then, thereís the cover artÖthe worldís foremost emblem of
remembrance, the poppy, contrasted with those two simple, blunt words ñ Cannon Fodder.
Jeez, even Banksy might balk at something like thatÖespecially when you end up showcasing
the game on Remembrance Day itself. Itís striking, certainly ñ and when you consider
the origins of the poppy and the millions that died ñ an entire generation of lost
souls ñ and the governmentís general lack of action when it comes to being responsible
for the whole thingÖitís grim, itís vicious, but itís born out of anger at the hideousness
of war, and itís an anger that should be respected. Even now, nearly 100 years after
the monstrous anger of the guns and the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells, the care
of soldiers affected by past and present conflicts is still something that, in the governmentís
eyes, should be fostered onto other people, even though theyíre responsible for itÖwhich
makes this particular picture of a group of noted warmongers staining the Cenotaph with
their pimped-out poppy wreaths little more than a sneering insult.
In a time when the likes of Mortal Kombat and Doom were filling up column inches every
week with screeds about violent games, you can hazard a guess that Cannon Fodder received
similar treatment, particularly from the Daily Star and the British Legion themselves, who
werenít exactly happy about the way their symbol was usedÖthe anti-war message of the
game was largely ignored and/or dismissed, and there were quite a few calls for the game
to be banned ñ just another violent video game. Even the gaming press got into trouble
over it, particularly Amiga Power, who had planned to reprint the poppy cover in their
magazine ñ the poppy cover was ultimately pulled both for the magazine and the game,
although itís still retained in the game itself. The message and the details of the
game were, of course, ignored ñ in truth, Cannon Fodder does more to humanise soldiers,
both yours and the enemy, than just about any other war game did at the time. Your soldiers
have names, and the fallen are always remembered forever ñ at every turn in the game, youíre
met with something that reminds you of the stupidity and hopelessness of the whole thingÖtoday,
in a world of faceless shooty-face games with shallow Christmas card ìwar is hellî messages,
Cannon Fodder would still stand out. In fact, if released today in this current climate
of unquestioning patriotism, it might be even more controversial now than it was in 1993.
Itís a bitter pill, and it might well make you angryÖbut well, it should ñ any good
piece of art should provoke a reaction of some kind, and thatís something video games
have to take on board - otherwise the perceived accomplishments of the whole ìgames-as-artî
movement amount to little more than a few re-prints of four dogs playing poker. In the
end though, this quote from the manual perhaps sums Cannon Fodder up best - ìdon't try playing
this at home, kids, because war is not a game - war, as Cannon Fodder demonstrates in its
own quirky little way, is a senseless waste of human resources and lives. We hope that
you never have to find out the hard way.îÖthat last lineís kind of tragic, when you think
about it 20 years on.
You might have noticed that I have reviewed this game and spent almost no time on actually
discussing the mechanics of the game itself, which I will not apologise for. The message
and what the game tried to achieve comes first. As good as Cannon Fodderís gameplay is, and
trust in me that itís very, VERY good ñ itís secondary to what the game tried to
say. Itís very simple to control, with everything handled by the mouse ñ moving with the left
button, and shooting with the right. Youíre set multiple tasks in each level, usually
based around killing all the enemies and taking out buildings that pump out endless enemies,
Gauntlet-style, until you lob a grenade in their direction. The game gets very tough
indeed, and quite quickly ñ a lot of the phases in Cannon Fodder are long, and if youíre
not paying full attention to everything then things wonít go well...both the enemy and
your soldiers die in one hit, after all. You can be prowling in an open space, you miss
a guy with a bazooka in the cornerÖand boom, theyíre all dead in a nanosecond ñ you didnít
have time to think about it. It pays to take missions slowly, to split your group up and
perhaps send a guy out on reconnaissance ñ the rocket guys, for example, are much better
dealt with by a single soldier who can avoid their rockets as opposed to a cumbersome snake
of the damned thatíll be ripped apart by them. As a game, Cannon Fodder is masterful
ñ you canít deny the gameís adrenaline rush and how on edge it makes you feel. The
truly exceptional thing about it though is that thereís so much more to it ñ which
places it right up there with Sensible Soccer as the groupís greatest achievement, and
one of the best games of the 90ís.
The gaming press as a whole were in agreement too ñ anti-war message or not, the game was
celebrated everywhere as nearly all Sensi Software titles were ñ and as you might have
guessed, the controversy sent sales through the roof. Almost every Amiga magazine going
dished out 90ís to the game as if they were going out of styleÖand hell, one particular
games journalist, Amiga Powerís Stuart Campbell, a forever-outspoken and frequently funny Scottish
Flattop, buggered off to Sensi Software and worked on the sequel! For yes, there would
be oneÖand as you know, these things can go either way. What am I going to say? Is
it like Speedball, where the sequel was a stunning improvement in every possible way?
Or like The Chaos Engine, where the game floundered in development hell and laid waste to any
hope of a future for the series? That and Cannon Fodder was already a classic ñ it
was going to be a VERY tough act to followÖbut a sequel did come, and it was released in
1994 ñ a neat little turnaround, no more trouble than usual in development, and a bit
of a different feelÖ
With the message part done with, Cannon Fodder 2 is mostly about the game ñ thereís more
of a general and fantastical story this time, in which our soldiers are captured by aliens
and sent travelling through time and space ñ youíre now fighting in plenty of other
places aside from the jungle! Thereís the desert, Chicago in 1930, a medieval setting,
and the alien mothership that ties the whole thing together!...kind of reminds me of Lemmings
a little, actually. The anti-war aspect of the first game has been toned down a little
this time, but then I guess thereís no real way you could have topped that. And on the
face of things, not much has changed about the gameplay ñ the controls and the general
objectives are pretty much the same. Cannon Fodder 2 is perhaps more like a mission pack
than a full-blown sequel ñ if it ainít broke, then donít fix itÖthis perhaps disappointed
a few people at the time who might have been expecting more, although the game was still
regarded as excellent and was very well received ñ more Cannon Fodder was always going to
be welcome! And to be honest, there is a pretty large difference when it comes to how the
two games are designed, and what they try to do in their levels.
The aforementioned Stuart Campbell ended up designing most of the levels in Cannon Fodder
2, and naturally he brought his own spin on the game ñ his sensibilities are quite arcade-y,
with preference given to short, sharp shocks of gameplay as opposed to lengthy passages.
Whereas the original usually featured huge, lengthy levels, this one features mostly small
levels that are usually packed full of enemiesÖhereís one where your squad quite literally starts
out on the centre of a bullseye. Sometimes you donít have any time to think at all ñ
like the best arcade games, you just have to act. You can certainly expect to lose a
hell of a lot of soldiersÖitís a tough game, perhaps tougher than the original ñ although
to be fair to it, itís much more consistent with its difficulty. The original game starts
out with fairly normal difficulty only to suddenly get INCREDIBLY hard around Mission
8 or so, whereas the sequel starts out hard, but gradually increases the difficulty throughout
the game ñ itís a much more even curve. The frequent changes in surroundings may appear
to be little more than re-skins, but each of them do have certain unique traps you have
to be aware of, such as the insta-death floors on the mothership. One of the best parts though
are the occasional references to old classics ñ the aforementioned single-screen levels
remind me quite a bit of Robotron, for example. Or thereís this stage that takes its layout
straight from Tapper ñ the enemies are the customers, and the doors you have to blow
up are the glasses and tips. And this medieval stage takes a leaf right out of the Spectrum
classic Chaos, with its placement of wizards, trees and the like coming directly from said
game.
It should be noted that a lot of this information does come from Stuart Campbell himself, who
wrote a wonderful commentary on Cannon Fodder 2 for his own website ñ Iíll link to it
in the description. As someone who had previously struggled with Cannon Fodder 2 and had dismissed
it as a very good game but still basically a mission pack, being able to read his own
thought processes behind the levels helped me understand what he was trying to do, and
when I play through the game now I have a lot more fun with it as a result ñ when you
look closer at it instead of simply struggling with it and crying about how hard it is, the
differences that are there definitely stand out. Iíd still put the first game on top,
but Cannon Fodder 2 is, in the end, a very worthy sequel ñ if you like the first game
and youíve never happened to play the second, then trust me ñ itís definitely worth doing
so. It deserves more recognition as a jolly good video game sequelÖ
And so, thatís Cannon Fodder! Two games that are both excellent in their own way ñ classics
that not only speak of the era they were made in, that old time Britpop of the early 90ís,
those parkas and Fila tracksuits that might as well be in a silent movie nowÖnot that
most Amiga people were probably into any of that, but hey ñ games like Cannon Fodder
did more than they ever really needed to do, and they canít be thanked enough for thatÖoh
yeah ñ I guess there was some other strategy game that came out under the ìCannon Fodderî
name released on Steam a year or so ago, but Iíve heard itís a massive pile of *** and
nothing like the original, and therefore I have absolutely no interest in covering it.
So there. Iíll simply leave it with these two greats ñ not just one, but two of the
best games of the whole decade. And as for war? Well, itís horrible. Itís savage. Itís
humankind at its most tragic and hopelessÖbut sometimes, just a little teensy-weensy bit
of the timeÖitís fun! And with that said, itís time to end the video. Thanks for watching,
and wherever you are, whoever you be, have a good one, take care, and Iíll see you next
time.