At the back of every game shelf, at the bottom of every YouTube favourites list, in the dark recesses of every gamer's heart, they live. Games with which we are far too familiar, games that some of us have taken a near-masochistic pride in seeking out. Superman. E.T. Super Noah's Ark 3D. These are some of the worst games ever made. And now comes Paper Wars: Cannon Fodder, the press campaign of which claims to top them all. "This is a warning: do not even try to play it," says the release, speaking of outsourcing to Poland and Hungary to produce the game "in the cheapest way you can imagine," mocking its own hand-drawn graphics and uninspired plot while slyly hinting at its positive aspects. But presentation is about where this "purposely bad game" business ends.
It's one of the smarter ad campaigns we've seen, especially for a downloadable title, and it's definitely better than the alternative – emphasising why yours is the tower defence title that players ought to buy, why its concepts are so original and why you should ignore the fact that it's available for iOS and Android at a lower price. Paper Wars is all of these things, but for 500 Wii Points you're getting a pretty nice package with a good amount of content, even if it is the whole boy-meets-tower boy-defends-tower story all over again.
Your goal is simple: blow up enemy forces before they reach the left side of the screen. If you defeat enough, you win; if too many cross over, you lose. The small stage size is perhaps Cannon Fodder's biggest flaw – there's so little time to destroy your enemies that it's easy to occasionally become overwhelmed. You can fire a normal weapon or a special missile by holding A or B respectively until a gauge fills up to a small degree; you can't rapid-fire, and the longer you hold the button down, the bigger the explosion. This gives things an interesting rhythm that forces you to think ahead instead of button-mashing, and the controlled chaos that results makes the experience quite fun.
You can play either Campaign or Survival mode; the former breaks up into separate solo missions with a bit of narrative in between, while the latter pits you against an endless wave-after-wave onslaught for one to four players. Best of all, the main mode breaks up into three variations: Classic Campaign, Winter Assault and Cyber Wars (which the game hilariously opens with "Welcome in the Cyberspace where everything is possible.") In a game that calls itself the worst ever, you might think that these are simple re-skins, but happily they're indeed unique collections of missions featuring different enemies, power-up, special weapon variations and more. Each feels somewhat unique, especially thanks to new challenges like ammo limitation and the colour-coded weaponry of Cyber Wars – you'll switch between red, green and blue bullets with the D-Pad to defeat the corresponding enemies while knocking everyone else about unharmed. It changes the way you must play and strategise, and that's enough to add a good deal of replay value. Each campaign features 28 missions that you can experience over three difficulty settings, and you can earn medals based on performance as well as unlock achievements.
Unfortunately, the difficulty level spikes abruptly in the latter two campaigns, even on the easiest setting. A challenge is definitely a good thing, and the willing can get through these spots with persistence, but they come unexpectedly early and can really deter you from wanting to continue.
Most of the "worst game ever" claim boils down to Cannon Fodder's presentation. The enemies are crudely drawn, simplistically animated stick figures, everything comes on a cut-out moving piece of notebook paper and the writing is full of grammar mistakes, upside-down or backward letters and, for some reason, the letter "z" replacing "s". To top it off, every level is set atop a JPEG image of a lawn or something. It's actually quite charming, especially when a little paper explosion pops up, and it's good to see such commitment to a style. As for the audio, the menu music may prove odd and repetitive, but in-game it's overall not so bad either.
Conclusion
Paper Wars is far from the worst game ever, though kudos to iFunForAll for getting our attention with its hilarious press campaign. Lots of content and three unique mission sets make it quite the enjoyable tower defence title, and four-player Survival Mode is a treat. Small level size and some unfortunate difficulty spikes keep the experience from becoming as good as it ought to, however, but this is nevertheless one worth checking out.
Comments 13
LOL! That is the most funniest game ever! Nice review!
They obviously haven't seen Fireplacing
The title "Cannon Fodder" reminds me of when the Civil War when the Confederate army started running out of cannonballs: they started stuffing the cannons with every kind of shrapnel imaginable, rocks, musket balls, scrap metal, forks and knives, tin cans, etc...
When the gunpowder ignited, the shrapnel that exploded out of the cannon inflicted far more wounds to the Union troops due to the huge blast radius.
hey this actually looks pretty fun, so little detractors it almost sounds like more of a 7. But I guess Corbie probably owns the legal rights to the 7.
I hate games that make fun of bad games. "We'll be funny and make you do a bunch of stupid stuff!" Well it's not fun, so...
@Ren Yeah it was close, but those difficulty spikes really off-set the experience for me.
@Kid_A That doesn't really apply to this. It has to do with presentation only.
While i applaud this game for being different and decent it doesn't really appeal to me.
What would nicely go in line with this is the release of a game simply called Cannon Fodder (from the SNES, Genesis and GBC). I have the GBC version and think it's a very fun game.
@StarDust:Seeing that you're interested in the Civil War you could be interested in this song trilogy by Iced Earth.
Why does it get a 6 and in review is like a 7 or 8?
@DarkEdi Per our scoring policy,
It's a decent game - it could be a good game, but the faults I've listed drag it down.
@battLeToaD Cannon Fodder was an awesome game. And Iced Earth are an awesome band.
I can't get my head around these tower defense games though, they're slightly repetitive and you can find them by the shedload at the moment...
Now, if my fireplace just advertised like this, it would make a lot more sense
Earthbound tried that marketing strategy. I hope this game can reap more success from it.
Another reason we deserve a release of Earthbound then. (No offense since i know there might legal issues but i'd really love to have this game).
Only question is if you're cool enough to say "But Earthbound is the worster game ! Gimme gimme gimme, Ninty !" If you're not LJM that is.
@chewytapeworm (10.): Stop being me please ! Seriously though ... you've got a great taste, good sir.
Tap here to load 13 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...