Tech Olive

Back in my early days of gaming, I remember going to a friends house and catching glimpses of his older brother playing this top-down military strategy game that captivated me. I never learned of this game’s name, so I was tortured by this mystery for many years.

Fast-forward about 8 years and I stumble across that very same game on the internet. I was speechless and knew that I would have to put this game through the tests. Was it worth the wait? Could this game possibly have been as good as it looked all those years ago? Time to answer some questions.

Surprisingly, the game survived the test of time rather gracefully. Still remaining undeniably playable, the game even manages to be impressively difficult and challenging without causing too much this-game-is-impossible-I’m-going-to-kill-my-neighbors kind of rage that so many classic games tend to inflict.

Instead of building a massive horde of faceless and nameless minions that carry out your genocides as you would see in just about every other strategy title, you’re given a group of soldiers that you must use tactically and intelligently to get the upper hand in later levels.

As you progress through the game with your soldiers, they will level up, and become better soldiers, but only if you can keep them alive! That’s one of this game’s most unique traits. Cannon Fodder changed things up a bit in the gaming world with its novel approach to the soldiers that are used in the game. Instead of getting a team that you had to keep alive or soldiers that would respawn at some point during or at the end of a mission, you can actually finish the levels with as few as one soldier. Then, before your next mission, you would get fresh recruits to replace the fallen. The draw back here, of course, is that the fresh-from-training soldiers are back at level 1.

For its time, Cannon Fodder was fantastic. Even today, it is more than playable for any fans of classic RTS games, especially fans of games like the Commandos series. And, while time has killed some of this game’s wonder and excitement that I experienced while watching others play it, it is totally worth playing for any die-hard strategy gamers.