Tribute to Cannon Fodder - Nazis

If you fancy emptying round after round of your M1 Grande into the hearts of Nazis till their Luger-equipped hand goes cold, chances are you've had your share of Nazi killing. It's time to pay our respects to all those great games that allowed us to perforate Nazis - one of our favorite flavors of cannon fodder. Here they are:

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Released: 2001

In RTCW you played the role of U.S. Army Ranger William "B.J." Blazkowicz, who's sent to investigate 'Heinrich Himmler's (one of the most powerful men in the Nazi Army) personal projects revolving around the SS Paranormal division. Blazkowicz gets captured and is held in Castle Wolfenstein, and during his escape he discovers how occult-obsessed the Nazis really were.

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What that translates into, gameplay-wise, is you killing Nazi supersoldiers, undead Nazis, Nazi Paratroopers, and an entire parade full of some of the weirdest creatures, sprinkled with ample Nazi seasoning. The game had some of the best multiplayer too, with a class based system that allowed you to play as the Allied forces and take on real people in online Nazi avatars!

The Darkness

Released: 2007

Playing as Jackie Estacado - a guy possessed with a spirit known as 'the Darkness' - gave you access to the awesome 'darkness powers', which included darkness tentacles that let you impale enemies, the power to summon imp-like creatures to serve you, and the lethal 'creeping dark' tentacles that let you get to hard-to-reach places, sneak up on the enemy, and bore a hole through their hearts.

While the entire game didn't revolve around killing Nazis, one of its major levels took you to the 'Otherworld' - an entire realm stuck in the World War I, where the dead keep fighting each other. What's really insane here, is that you don't just get to kill Nazis in the Darkness, you get to kill Nazis who're already dead and stuck in hell eternally, to add insult and a whole lot of hurt, to injury!

Call of Duty: World at War

Released: 2008

Call of Duty: World at War takes place in different theatres of war from previous Call of Duty games. You take on the Japs this time, and the German killing is set to a minimal in the single player campaign.

For your Nazi killing needs, the game has a Nazi Zombie co-op mode, that lets you and a mate take on hordes of Nazi Zombies! Again, the Nazis get trolled on big time - it's not enough that they're already dead, so the developers actually reanimate them as zombies, just so that they can be killed all over again!

Bloodrayne

Released: 2002

In BloodRayne, you play as a busty half-vampire half-human chick with a rogue attitude and a score to settle with vampires. While most of the game sees you take on other vampires, a sizable chunk of it has you purge a small region of Nazis and different Nazi-created abominations.

Unlike in the other games, in BloodRayne it's not just bullets you can use to kill these Nazis - BloodRayne has a pair of lethal arm blades that slice through flesh like a hot knife through human butter. She slices, dices, decapitates, dismembers and eviscerates Nazis in the most stylish manner, that's sure to appeal to your sadistic side.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (and expansions)

Released: 2002

MoH:AA lets you play as US Army Lt. Mike Powell, an agent for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), as he travels through North Africa and Europe purging the region of Nazis like a one-man army. MoH:AA was one of the first World-War shooters, in spite of which its renditions of many of the legendary battles were intense and really well made.

Get back to what this article's all about - Nazis are pretty much all you kill in MoH:AA. You make them eat your frag grenade, watch them chomp on your potato-masher, fill their bellies with lead, and stab their black little hearts with your bayonette. If that's not enough, MoH:AA had some really intense multiplayer offerings where you could take on online Nazi wannabes.