You know what gaming needs more of? Zeppelins - and the classic yet flawed Codename Eagle had Zeppelins out the wazoo.
In many ways Codename Eagle is the greatest game that you've never played. When released it garnered many sub 20% review scores, and its alterna-history no world war 1 storyline was laughingly short and unappealing. But behind that was the most fantastic multiplayer experience ever created.
It was a game that didn't even appeal when it hit five bucks in the bargain bin until one weekend back in 2000 when we swung down the the now defunct Clanlan in Sydney for our regular CounterStrike tournament. After a tense come from behind win on de_cobble in the final we were introduced to Codename Eagle as a wind down.
This strange, bug ridden multiplayer game was kind of unlike anything we'd played before. A shooter that focused on Vehicles. Capture the flag was the aim, and after a heart pumping come from behind CS win, the perfect way to wind down.
Soon it was apparent that the game was so buggy that it actually enhanced the experience. You could time exiting and entering airplanes so that the pilot need only fly over the flag, you jump out, they turn and you jump back in. Armored cars would get stuck on the tiniest bit of terrain, and the netcode so awful that we stopped trying to shoot each other when on foot.
Then came the Zeppelin, the single most awesome thing we'd encountered in games. Designed to be flown around the map as a vector for an aerial assault (parachutes were standard issue) it was designed to move very slowly, especially when lifting up and down in the air.
The thing was, that the map was set on an island, with cliffs going into the sea. You could slowly drop the zeppelin into the water, then gently push against the cliff until it was pointing upwards. This way you could climb faster, and further into the sky, turning a tactical parachute jump into a five minute formation freefall.
That day, and at many LANs subsequent we lost hours to that Zeppelin. Even at times organising online get-togethers via dialup, the lag compounded by the woeful netcode. We even managed to get vehicles into it, spending five minutes shooting and destroying the zeppelin at the apex of its flight so we could actually get the vehicle out again, then engaged in formation skydiving with tumbling vehicles.
Such a horrible, bug ridden game ended up occupying a special place in our hearts. The game's developers, Refraction entertainment went on to merge with another developer called Digital Illusions CE. Their next title was Battlefield 1942, which retained a touch of the absurdity that made us love Codename Eagle so, but it never was the same without that wonderfully buggy Zeppelin.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012