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Let's Play: Cannon Fodder- HOME 286:13 AWAY Updated 05/18/12

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Sensei:
This game is not endorsed in any way by the Royal British Legion.


This, Gentlemen, I am obligated to share with you: Cannon Fodder, put simply, is an extremely dwarfy game. Made by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in 1994, you can get it on GOG, and possibly other sources (not that I would know anything about that!) I run it through DOSBox.


Why is it so dwarfy, you ask? I'll get to that in a minute. First let me tell you why it's fun. CF is basically an isometric shooter- its mechanics are extremely simple. You control a squad of soldiers who travel as a group- you only directly control the leader, and everybody else follows in a line. Clicking the left mouse button moves your group, clicking (and holding) the right mouse button tells everybody to fire in a given direction. Left clicking while firing will throw a grenade or shoot a bazooka, if you have any. You can also split your group into up to three squads- you can only control one, but the others will fire automatically and can handle a small trickle of enemies just fine. There are crates full of grenades, and barrels of bazookas to find (or shoot and explode) on the maps, and usually buildings with must be destroyed with explosives and spew enemies, like in Gauntlet. Bullets do not cause friendly fire, but explosives do. There are also vehicles, and a few other tricks the enemy will pull on you. Everyone in the game, whether friend or foe, dies in one hit (though later in the game there is armor which you let you survive one more hit).

The basics of the game are simple and addicting. But the level designs quickly become massive, sprawling, complex, and devious. We'll see more of that later.


Then there's the game's sense of humor. Everything is in irreverent, mermaid-farming good fun. There's pretty much no dialogue in the game, and in fact few "jokes", but somehow the atmosphere of the game carefully builds towards something pretty funny, in a dark sort of way. I have a hard time describing this, but consider this quote from the tips section of the manual:

--- Quote ---When you have shot a man and he’s lying there, dead, shoot him some more to make him jump around like a bunny.
--- End quote ---


This is "Boot Hill", the screen from which you save and load, and visit between every mission. This is the part of the game, more than anything else, that smacks of Dwarf Fortress. Each soldier in your group is not a faceless pawn. Well, they're not faceless at least. As you can see in the above screen, each one has a name, rank and kill count. After each mission, if they survive they will persist to become part of your squad in the next mission, and they will gain a rank. You also get 15 new recruits after each mission, who rank up every three missions they go without being in combat. Once your solider is dead, he is dead permanently. There's also the HOME/AWAY counter- bet you can guess what that's for. This screen has another important function. You will see it later.


And we're ready to go! Let's assume I've already beat the first mission. Here's mission two: It has two phases (two levels you have to pass before you can save your game). It tells us that in this phase, our only objective is to "KILL ALL ENEMY". There are three soldiers in our squad, including Jools and Jops from the first mission, and 27 people back at Boot Hill (15 for the mission we beat, 15 for this mission, minus the three we're taking with us).

So, what should we do now? I can cover the game in screenshots, videos (does anyone know a good free video editor?) and maybe livestream if you guys are up for it. I think videos would be nice because the game can be very fast paced and it can be hard to take screenshots that express all the suddenness in this game. A live stream of course has time restrictions, and I know some people would rather just read the thread than get on youtube to watch a video of the game being played.

Also: Bets on how long Jools and Jops will live?

Funk:
two missions tops.

timferius:
I remeber playing this ages ago! great game!

Sadly, I think poor Jools won't survive the end of phase 2, and Jops, deeply saddened by this loss, will sacrifice himself in mission 3 for the greater good.

Sensei:
Welcome back, gents! We're starting off on mission two, of the game's twenty-four missions.



Our two Soldiers, corporals Jools and Jops, take the lead of a new soldier, Private Stoo.

Spoiler: Mission 2 (click to show/hide)

Our next mission sees our three brave heroes in the jungle, alone, and out-manned, but not out-gunned.



Our soldiers' first act of heroism is to kill an idiot enemy soldier who was swimming when they got there. Hurrah!



The rest fell with little resistance.



Phase two is underway smoothly- this time, we'll have to destroy the source of the enemies, ridding the jungle of them once and for all!



With bloody fighting, we take the river and move forward. before us are the corpses of (probably) innocent civilians killed by the enemy. However, they could be evil civilians, I suppose. Or maybe the enemy ate eachother. Intelligence doesn't really know how much food the enemy has.



A sneaky enemy was floating along the river- or so we thought. After dozens of bullets, it became apparent that he was dead when we got here. Your tax dollars at work!



Further fighting takes us to the source of the enemy! Waves and waves of foes come from this... shack. While we have no explosives, there is a box next to the shack. Jools had the presence of mind to take it, yielding four hand grenades. With these deadly weapons, the building stood no chance, a single grenade sent chunks of building everywhere. Fortunately, our squad didn't get hit by a flying roof or door.


JOOLS, JOPS AND STOO are all HEROES IN VICTORY, and receive two rank-ups (one for each phase).

Jools is building up quite the kill count! We get a new recruit, private RJ.
Spoiler: Mission 3 (click to show/hide)
The next mission is in the frozen arctic. Here there are patches of ice that send soldiers all slippy-slidey.


We start off alone, and without adequate socks. There are several shacks on the icy fields here. Scrambling down the cliffs (we can go down anywhere, but only up at the slopes) we find a shack with a massive stash of explosives! Jools quickly shoots the box on the left and destroys the hut. For a moment restraining his itchy trigger finger, Jools manages not to shoot the boxes and we gather the three remaining.


In our absence, the building remaining have spawned huge amounts of goons, but fortunately, we ward them off with no casualties. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to screenshot most of the explodey, gory bits. Don't worry, there will be more explodey gore later.


JOOLS, JOPS, STOO and RJ are all HEROES IN VICTORY.

More recruits join the line for war. As you can see, Jools has 94 kills and... well, Jops doesn't. Okay, I can excuse the new guys, but what the hell, Jops? Really, Jools could have just been fighting the war himself so far. The first 15 recruits to get in line have also ranked up to corporal.

Spoiler: Mission 4 (click to show/hide)
To the Jungle again! We follow our friends and comrades in slaughtering our foes!


Naturally, we get right down to running around, finding shacks and grenading them- usually the shacks come with a handy supply of grenades. The mission is going so easily, just seek and destroy...


We come to river, and shoot men on the other side. The mud disguises a deadly patch of quicksand- a foe drowns in it, which is fortunate because otherwise Stoo might want to jump in the mud puddle. It'd be tragic if he died, especially in a non-glorious way like that.


Jools has a realization. He's killed every man so far. He doesn't need everyone else. So he forms the red Eagle Squadron (as you can see on the left side of the screen) to defeat the enemy on his own, leaving Snake Squadron to pick their noses.


There aren't any good screenshots, but Jools sure enough slaughtered all opposing him. A one-man army, a juggernaut, slaughter man and toppling building alike before his explosive rage. Separated from his fellowman, he is truly in his element, marching forward to leave his foes squirming and gargling in their own blood. No mere man could do this. Jools is LEADER. Jools is a GOD. JOOLS IS THE VERY GOD-EMPEROR OF MAN-KIND!


Jools tears through men in moments. I'm not kidding, but he does it so fast it's really hard to get a screenshot because the corpses only stay there for a second.


The next phase of our mission sees a new man, corporal Ubik (a truly dwarven name!) join the squad. He was an undercover agent who revealed to us the location of a native village that has been aiding the enemy.


We make our way through the jungle as always, killing as we go. But an enemy springs our of a foxhole and before Jools can smite him, he kills Stoo!


It's not about the mission any more. We found the village. We found their village people running around helpless, we found their soldiers off guard.

We killed them. All of them.


Our next phase saw us joined by CJ, sent by command as reinforcements.


It was a fairly routine mission, but in addition to the deadly quicksand, we saw our first land mine, shown here. Jools managed to shoot it before the entire party ran over it though.


Hey guys, lookit the gore!


JOOLS, JOPS, RJ, UBIK and CJ are HEROES IN VICTORY. Sadly, Staff Sergent Stoo is our first man LOST IN SERVICE. Jops ascends to the rank of Specialist. Jools is given the rank of specialist GOD-EMPEROR OF MAN-KIND.


We're 1/6 of the way through the war. More and more recruits line up on Boot Hill. In addition, there is now the gravestone of Stoo, our most honorable serviceman. Jools continues to lead the army, as GOD EMPEROR OF MAN-KIND.

njero:
This is quite simply one of the best games I ever found on a shareware disk.

Jools' time will come.

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