The game of the year? War, it seems, has never been so much fun.

The game of the year? War, it seems, has never been so
much fun.

Okay, so we've got this game slapped across our cover, it took
up an entire coverdisk last issue and we've all been enthralled
by Jools' imaginative and innovative use of basic Anglo-Saxon
expletives as we've begged and hassled him to write his long running
Diary Of A Game feature. Quite a lot of coverage for a single
game, but after spending a worryingly large amount of my time
playing Cannon Fodder, I'd say that anything up to and including
changing the name of this mag to Cannon Fodder Power would be
a justified amount of coverage.

It's fast, it's thoughtful, it's addictive and it's the kind
of game that I can see I'm going to be playing through the night
like a real saddo. So why don't you join me, and journey through
the next few pages as I explain to you why playing this game is
now more important to me than eating, sleeping or any other basic
bodily function.

Having to write pages of reviews every month, I'm always on the
lookout for something concise and snappy that'll end up in the
blob on the page (Which is the 'Call Out', technical term fans.
- Ed) but those Sensible boys have done my job for me. "War's
never been so much fun," they tell me, and when you load
up the game, you get a pretty groovetastic song that

drums the same message home. It's about two minutes long, is reminiscent
of an early UB4O track and sets the tongue.in-cheek, boot-in-mouth
tone of the game brilliantly. As the song runs, you're treated
to pictures taken from the pop

video in which the Sensible team dress up as soldiers, run around
with plastic guns and pose against a WW2 halftrack. It's all very
much in the vein of Oh What A Lovely War, or perhaps the fourth
series of Blackadder, and serves as a bit of an antidote to the
serious theme.

So boring game details next. The game is made up of 23 missions
which are spread over 72 different maps. There are five different
terrains - Jungle, Desert, Arctic, Heathiand and underground Base,
and although they're fairly well mixed up, there's a definite
weighting towards jungle levels at the beginning and underground
levels at the end. Oh yeah, the game comes on just three disks,
with the last half of the missions coming on disk three. Since
it recognises a second disk drive this means virtually no disk
swapping while you're playing. Hoorah!

So why buy this game then? Well, for a start it's massively simple
to get into. You start oft the game with a squad of men, and at
the end of every mission, you get a further 15 recruits, which
initially seems a tad excessive. However, by the time you get
to Mission Six and your boys are being slaughtered like cattle
at every twist and turn, you start to realise why you get so many
troops. Every time a soldier survives a mission, he's promoted,
and his accuracy, range and rate of fire is increased. You get
quite attached to anyone who survives more than a couple of levels,
but since everyone in the game has an equally tenuous grip on
life, there's inevitably a horrible moment when a rocket with
his name on it comes whooshing in and he gets his. The promotion
system means that you can end up with a crack team, but it also
means that you get terribly paranoid and ever so careful with
your men.

You control your boys with the mouse, and click on the left button
to move, the right to fire and both to throw a grenade or fire
a rocket, depending on what you've selected. You can easily split
the band up into sub-groups, which opens up all

sort of possibilities. The soldiers can't swim and shoot at the
same time, so by sending them over rivers two at a time, you can
provide supporting fire from the bank. You can even click a preset
course for one group while you control another, which allows you
to attack from two directions at the same time. Not only is this
easy to work out, but it's so simple that you can do it quickly,
which is essential if you want to split the team or switch to
rockets when you're under fire from tanks and helicopters and
all manner of nastiness.

The scrolling system works so well that most of the time you're
not even aware of it. To look in any direction, all you have to
do is move the mouse near the edge and you push the screen, just
like you'd imagine it would. If anyone made a dictionary of computer
game words, then the listing for 'intuitive' would be "Just
play Cannon Fodder and you'll know. Okay?"

Still not convinced yet? Well, the missions involve lots and
lots of killing, with the occasional spot of hostage rescue thrown
in before masses more killing. Strictly speaking, the missions
break down to killing everyone, blowing up all the buildings,
rescuing prisoners, taking hostages and protecting civilians,
but it all involves killing so many people it isn't even funny
anymore.

Complete carnage doesn't impress you? How about four channels
of sound that completely immerse you in each

world? How about authentic jungle noises with parrot squawks,
or the howl of a freezing wind blowing across the broken ice floes?
How about sound that reflects what you're looking at on the screen
and that fades realistically with distance, making it an essential
gameplay feature? What do I mean? Well, if you come out of the
jungle (squawks, rustling, etc) and get to a river (running water)
but hear distant rotors (whump, whump, whump), then you know there's
a helicopter near, and that it's time to hide. Muted gunfire tells
you that enemy soldiers can see you and are heading your way,
and the flop-sweat fear of hearing a rumbling tank engine has
to be experienced to be fully understood. And fl that doesn't
get you, then stirringly patriotic WW1 jingles as you complete
each mission or a Jimi Hendrix-esque rendition of the last post
as you remember your dead are sure to knock your ear-socks off.

Thinking that it sounds like 72 maps of pretty much the same
thing? Wrong! Although you start off the game with a fairly simple
run-around-and-shoot-everything approach, you quickly cotton onto
the fact that this tactic only works for the first few levels,
and that a bit more finesse is required for later levels. By the
time you get to Mission Seven, many of the levels are puzzles
in the Lemmings mould, and successfully completing the level depends
as much on you planning ahead as it does on your reactions. How
exactly do you get past the helicopter, evade the gun turrets,
blow up the bunkers and then blast down the stockade wall so that
a civilian can escape to his house? Well, take it from me, it's
hugely difficult and involves a tank.

Yes, tanks! And skidoos and jeeps and helicopters firing heat-seeking
missiles. Whatever fearsome vehicles the bad guys have got, then
at some point in the game you get to drive them as well. Many
of them haven't got a weapon, but that's no problem as you can
just drive over people, and whenever you find a ramp, then rest
assured there's lots of Dukes Of Hazzard tomfoolery to be had.

Hey, I just mentioned civilians, which are another feature to
keep you guessing. There are cute little eskimos in the arctic,
natives in the jungle and even moseying gunslingers in the desert,
but you never know how they're going to react. Some of them are
neutral and just wander around, some of them are hostile (in which
case they deserve everything they get) but a lot of them are reactive,
so if you kill any of them, they'll open up on you.

You want more before you buy this game? Blimey, how much? Okay,
how about hyper-intelligent baddies in helicopters who'll trash
you in the open, but can be evaded by hiding in the treeline or
holes? How about a completely interactive terrain, so your troops
bounce over every bump, slide across every ice floe, fall down
every cliff and even sink in the swamps? It's another incredible
game feature, since you can blow down fences with grenades and
destroy huts with explosives, but you've got to look out for bits
of debris as they fly off in all directions. You've also got to
keep a look out for suspicious lumps in the ground as many of
the levels are littered with lethal booby traps of all descriptions.

And you want blood? Good, 'cos Cannon Fodder's got masses of
it, with each little guy blowing apart in a hail of gunfire, or
lying around moaning and squirting after a spring-loaded spear
has shot out of the ground and impaled him. And then there's the...
Oh, just go and buy the flipping thing.

So you've waded through four pages of top-quality pictures and
masses of praise for this game, and no doubt you'll have noticed
that there's something missing - criticism. The simple reason
for this is that I can't find anything wrong with the game. "In
which case," smart arses out there are going to say to me,
"why haven't you given it 100% then?" Right, here are
a few reasons why:

I It's got a finite number of levels, and even though 72 maps
are going to take you ages and you can keep going back to them
to try out different ways, there's going to be a time when every
level is too easy for you. Eventually.

2 It's only a one-player game, and two's always better than one.
This rule applies to everyday life as well.

3 Even though it's brilliant, I can't believe that it's the best
game that's ever going to be made, so we've got to leave a few
marks for when the ultimate game finally gets round to appearing.

4 Not even real life is worth 100%. Yeah, think about it.

· CAM WINSTANLEY

UPPERS

Everything

DOWNERS

Nothing

THE BOTTOM LINE

Buy it