Poppies huh? They've got no friends at AMIGA POWER, I can tell you. It's hard to believe, but it's been a whole year since Cannon Fodder came out.

Poppies huh? They've got no friends at AMIGA POWER,
I can tell you. It's hard to believe, but it's been a whole year
since Cannon Fodder came out. Yup twelve issues since our 'Poppy
cover that never was' and our legal scrapes with the British Legion
over whether over whether the poppy is just a flower or a recognisable
symbol of a registered charity. A whole year since our appearance
in The Star under the headline "Poppy Insult to War Dead",
and practically the anniversary of the same tabloid rag's follow
up piece libelling Stuart Campbell as "spotty". And,
of course, Virgin sitting back and drooling at all the free publicity
for what must surely have been one of their biggest games of the
year.

Learning from their mistakes, the icon of Cannon
Fodder 2: Once More Unto The Breach is a hand grenade, because
the great thing about an explosive charge, wrapped in hundreds
of metres of wound inflicting wire is that it doesn't have the
same child-frightening, 'responsible adult'-freaking, society-disruptive
effect as an iddy-biddy flower, Thank God.

But to the game itself. Co-designed by Stuart and
the other Sensible multi-millionaires (with a special guest designing
appearance by a couple of AP readers) , what does it offer that
the original game didn't? What will you be getting that's fresh
and exciting, innovative and crafty enough to warrant thirty quid?
Weeeellllllll...

Not that much to be honest. If you're feeling chirpy
and content with life, this is obviously a good thing: Cannon
Fodder was excellent, and to muck about with a winning formula
woud be the height of folly. So to release a thematically identical
sequel with the same number of missions (24) and levels (72) as
the original guarantees at least the same degree of entertainment.
If, however, your outlook on the world corresponds more with the
pre death one of Bill Hicks, you'll be looking at CF2 as no more
than a full price data disk; a corporate cash in and a traiterous
exploitation of the zoo-going children of the world. To which
view do I subscribe? Read on punter.

HENNN-HUT

I'm assuming everyone knows about the mouse control
system, the rockets and grenades and the forced-perspective viewpoint
of the original, so I'm basing this review around the changes
between that game and the sequel. CF2 features the same kind of
foot soldiers (with guns and rockets), the same kind of turrets
and the same kinds of vehicles (tanks, helicopters, jeeps etc)
as the first game, only they all look different. But no amount
of new graphics can disguise their true nature. The 'rocket launchers'
may be blobby aliens or powerful wizards for example. The 'foot-soldiers'
gangsters or mediavil knights; the 'jeeps' ancient battering rams
or sleek gangster limos; and the 'helicopters' witches or, er,
helicopters; their true nature is unmistakable.

There's a new song at the beginning too. It's a
funky dance tune complete with naeto horn section stabs, but somehow
not quite as listenable-to as the original CF tune. (Jon Hare?
I only liked him in his early years - Steve). And although
much of the ingame music's been re-mixed and jazzed up, I found
myself turning down the volume between levels to avoid most of
it. Maybe it's because I've played CF to death and therefore heard
all the chirrupingly jingoistic WW1 tunes hundreds of gillions
of times before, but I really wish they'd included a Music Off
option this time around.

HUP HOOP HREEP HORP

My initial feelings about the game were of disappointment.
It's quite clear that ony the graphics and maps have been changed
(no air-to-air combat, for example, which is something that was
missing from the original). This is Cannon Fodder Again rather
than CF2, with wacky new pics of the Sensible boys at the beginning,
a new-look alien cemetary in which to bury your lads and the like.
Knowing months before you see the finished game that there aren't
going to be any new weapons or vehicles still hadn't prepared
me for playing it and feeling that I'd done it all before. Scepticism
turned to horror when I started playing from the beginning only
to discover that the missions are graded in exactly the same way
as before. The first mission gets you used to the mouse, the next
one introduces grenades, then you get rockets, vehicles and so
on introduced discretely to build you up to the carnage of the
later levels. I thought this was kind of odd, as most people who
are going to buy CF2, have already played the original and therefore
have no need for trainer levels. Why not have included them as
a seperate training mode? Forcing the player to trudge through
them is like Psygnosis putting all those easy warm up levels in
the Lemmings follow-ups.

Well that's the low point of the review over with.
Okay so the starter levels look simple, but they're much harder
than the originals and that sort of makes up for it. After about
seven missions or so you start to see two fine and dandy themes
appearing in the game. The first is that most (if not all) phases
are named after song lyrics or titles, which has to be the Stuart
Campbell influence. I spotted some of the more obvious ones such
as Idiot Country and Stuck in the middle with you, but it will
take a really top-class anal NME devotee to make sense of the
likes of Terminal Beach (A Jesus and Mary Chain limited edition
B-Side. Apparently - Ed) and Watusi Rodeo (A song by
Guadalcanal Diary. It says here. - Ed)

The second fine and dandy themeis that there's a
lot more tricky tricksterness in CF2. The levels penalise you
from taking the obvious route and reward you for taking a more
obscure approach (except when trying an obscure approach becomes
too obvious, natch). Roads are mined and vehicles temptingly placed
within your grasp to lure your squad to a messy death. Sneaking
behind huts might not be glamerous, but it's often a better tactic
than charging straight down the middle and loads of levels make
you think before you move, injecting puzzle elements to counterpoint
all the killing. The original game went in pulses of fiendishly
hard and stuply simple levels, but in CF2, the curve's, well,
more of a curve. There are even varying levels of difficulty built
into each mission, with the enemy getting more aggressive and
accurate, the more time you take to kill them. This feature, combined
with fewer sprawling and empty levels, and a good mix of tricky
and brutally harsh gung-ho phases creates a much smoother, atogether
more entertaining set of challenges for you.

LASER FODDER, MORE LIKE

So. Why's the final score less than the original's
94%, then? The reasins are twofold. You start off in Beirut, head
off to battle mediaevel knights, then take on gangsters in Chicago
and finally board an alien spaceship and trash their home world.
There's little explanation in the manual as to why you're doing
this and absolutely none in the game. As a result, the game doesn't
hang together. Sensible are being clever at the expense of being
atmospheric. Flying form a jungle to the arctic is one thing,
but from the Dark Ages to an alien spaceship is something else
entirely. Yeah right you may be thinking, but it's true. For me,
Cannon Fodder means offing hordes of blokes in sordid warzones.
It's kind of the computer equivalent of a John Woo movie, or of
'be-ing' big Arnie in Commando. Placing the guys in Chicago seems
odd, but having them on an alien planet's just downright wrong.
(At least the earth based levels have both feet on the ground,
if you see what I mean. I hate the entire look of the alien planet,
despite some of the levels being very well designed. From the
disgusting purple pools to the silly flowers. I goes against the
entire Cannon Fodder concept of being an arcade wargame.)

More universally, there's the value rating of the
game. I harped on about this in the beginning, but the fact is
that if you bought Cannon Fodder then you've already paid once
for all the time that's gone into designing and perfecting the
game engine. Now you're expected to do the same again. CF2 is
not a new game, it's a collection of levels. And in video games,
if you're standing still, then you're moving backwards. So there
we have it. CF2 has lost the coherent feel of the original (a
minus) but it is harder and has more challenging levels (a plus).
It's got some garish alien worlds (a big minus) and is overpriced
(a minus) but at the same time has all the amazing control and
playability of the second-best Amiga game in the world (a big
plus).

Add all of those together and you end up with something
that's not quite as worthwhile as the original. But something
still brilliant.

-Cam Winstanley. Amiga Power, Issue 44, December
1994.

Uppers

All the same gameplay as Cannon Fodder. The Beirut,
Mediaevil and Chicago levels look and play wonderfully. The level
design is consistently better than the original. It's harder two

Downers

Nothing new has been added. The alien levels look
terrible and, for me at least, spoil the hardcore combat feel
of the game.

The Bottom Line

I'm in the enviable position of being able to play
it without paying for it, and I love it. Even with the offensive
alien levels, it's a fearsomely cool piece of entertainment. But
- and it's a significant but - being a Cannon Fodder fan slavering
for new challenges and having to fork out 30 quid to feed your
addiction is bound to sting a bit.