Break out the Heavy Weaponry on Xbox Live

By Dan Zuccarelli . January 24, 2007 . 10:15am

Heavy Weapon is one of the newest XBLA original titles to hit the download service. It comes from Pop Cap Games, the group responsible for last year’s live arcade hit Marble Blast Ultra. That game was well worth a purchase with excellent re-playability and competitive multiplayer. How does Heavy Weapon stand up?

 

The controls are very similar to Robotron 2084 or Smash TV. You control movement with one analog stick and direction of fire with the other. It’s simple and intuitive. So it’s quick to jump into. Sadly it also doesn’t get much deeper from there. Piloting the "Atomic Tank" you move across the landscape shooting down just about everything that moves. You’ll move from area to area doing the same thing over and over and over.

 

Each level may look slightly different but they all play exactly the same. Tank rolls forward, you shoot stuff down and fire off the occasional nuke. With names like Geiger County, Tankylvania, Napalm Springs and Concussion Coast the whole thing plays out like a cheap action movie, complete with a ridiculous tough guy voice. Imagine Duke Nukem trying to make himself sound tougher.

 

It’s not the style of game than lends itself to a play-by-play test, since what you do in the 1st minute is the same thing you’re doing in the 10th minute, without much variety. There are powerups that you gain at the end of each level like lightning, rockets, missiles, and a flak cannon. In a nice touch that these can be improved or taken away by the player after each level, so if something’s not working, you can change it up as you go. All the powerups just add to your destructive power, but the game gets stronger as the levels go by, so it feels like an even wash.

 

The is also a learning curve problem. Heavy Weapon goes fron insultingly easy to frustratingly difficult. I didn’t take a single hit of damage until the 4th level! It was so easy my girlfriend and I decided to try a little test. I played level one with my eyes closed and the volume down. I told her to tell me if I died. I actually made it through the 1st level with dying. Now that my friends, is EASY. Conversely, by level 8 the game is hard enough to make you want to chuck the controller across the room.

 

It also needs to be mentioned that the animation (or lack there of) is terrible. Just about all the enemies are planes and just fly in a straight line over your head, with 0 frames of animation. In one level there are dinosaurs (don’t ask) in the background, and they just kind of slide by… again 0 frames of animation. While I’m sure it’s not the case it feels like it was slapped together with out of the boxelements, like the XNA starter kit.

 

Perhaps the multiplayer is better, we’ll find out tomorrow night!

 

Screenshots:

 

 

 

• RSS
• Stumble this
• Digg it
• Share on Facebook
• No Comments »

Related Posts

• Puzzle Quest coming to Xbox Live Arcade
• E3 Swag Giveaway Xbox Live Gold Package
• Microsoft ameliorates Xbox Live downtime disappointments with a free game
• Shadowrun goes gold at the end of the month
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 speeds to Xbox Live Arcade

Search Categories

• Microsoft
• Playtests
• Pop Cap Games
• USA
• Xbox 360
• Xbox Live