Games Thursday : C-Dogs SDL – Tactical Action Game

Thursday, June 26th, 2008, 12:00 amRoys0 comments

C-Dogs SDL is an open source port of a classic DOS game of the same name which I played quite regularly years ago. The original game was first released by Ronny Wester in 1997 but this port was made by Jeremy Chin and Lucas Martin-King with binary releases for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The current version of C-Dogs SDL may only benumbered 0.4 but it’s perfectly playable.

Despite the primitive looking tilebased graphics, C-Dogs had probably the best explosion animation for any DOS game, rivalling even the massive detonations possible in Bullfrog’s Syndicate Wars. This game also sports some cool character customization options – I’ve named my operative Solid Snake and suited him up like his namesake in Metal Gear Solid 4.

C-Dogs was an impressively tactical game for its time. It features true line of sight together with projectiles that knock you back so you can never charge an enemy machinegunner from the front without taking substantial damage. Likewise, a steady stream of machinegun fire helps keep those pesky red knife and flamer ogres away from you.

The scoring system rewards accurate players so players relying mainly on slow-firing but powerful weapons like sniper rifles tend to achieve higher scores than machinegunners since missed shots actually deduct points from your score. You are allowed to choose any three weapons from the armoury at the start of the mission but since there’s no way of picking up alternative weapons or restoring your health during the actual missions, choosing wisely to ensure that your selection takes care of most situations is a definite must.

The default keys are Right Shift to shoot and Enter to switch weapons or slide in any direction with one of the cursor keys held down (very useful for closing in behind a enemy with a blazing flamer or a vicious knife but equally helpful in getting yourself impaled on an enemy knife ) You’ll probably want to change the keys to something more intuitive before delving into the campaigns.

Missions generally revolve around raiding-style assaults to retrieve valuable items, destroy equipment or simply exterminate enemies in the map. After successfully completing the mission objectives, proceed to the exit zone marked by yellow and black stripes (check the map by pressing Tab – the exit zone is indicated by a white-bordered rectangle) for extraction.