First impressions can be deceiving. You can look at something, instantly dismiss it as being worthless, and then never look at it again. The first impression that you get from PopCap’s PSN version of Heavy Weapon is a little bit like that. You load it up and head straight into the first mission, and after a somewhat average introductory sequence, you’re into the action. You control a tank with your left analogue stick, and you control the tank’s weapons with your right stick. Occasionally, you tap the R2 button to fire a screen-clearing nuke – but that’s the only deviation from the formula.
The goal is – obviously – to get past the waves and waves of enemy fighters, tanks, bombers and missiles, and reach the boss on each level. On occasion, friendly helicopters will hover past and drop a power-up to enable you to fight more effectively.
This sort of setup has been the basis for many, many superb games dating all the way back to the digital primordial soup. It doesn’t seem to work that well here. The main problem is the ridiculously random difficulty spikes that Heavy Weapon throws your way. I blasted through the first five levels – which are completely devoid of challenge – without losing a single life. Then, I hit the sixth level and proceeded to use four continues before reaching the seventh. All of a sudden, helicopters dropping nuclear missiles – which kill you if they hit ANY PART of the ground – start flying in, and your only option is to shoot down their payload before taking the vehicle down itself. Bearing in mind that you’re also being attacked on all fronts by the standard opposition, this becomes quite a task in itself. Once you do get past these troublesome fellows, you find that you’re back to the heat of the normal battle which – whilst now slightly more challenging due to the sheer amount of enemy fighters coming your way – now has the additional problem of those nuke-droppers turning up from time to time. There’s very little in gaming that’s more frustrating than being blown to smithereens by a nuclear missile that you can’t even attempt to take down because you’re penned in by gunfire from drone ships.
But, death comes with no penalty – other than losing your nukes and having to restart the level. Losing all of your lives brings up the option to try again, which you do – complete with your score and collected power-ups intact. This means that you have very little to lose, and therefore there’s never any feeling of pressure here. You complete a level or two, die, restart the level, complete it, die, restart the level and so on and so forth until you’ve beaten the game.
Bosses are another point of contention. With any 2D shoot-em-up, the bosses are the eventual target and generally bring out an impressive display of gunfire. I can safely say that not a single one of Heavy Weapon’s bosses show any sort of creativity or challenge. For the most part, you can collect your maximum load of three nukes during the level itself, and pretty much just unleash them all on the boss to defeat it. Every now and again, a boss will require about five seconds of concentrated gunfire on top of this but in general, if reducing thrilling passages of gaming to three button-presses was the goal, then Heavy Weapon succeeds.
So, Heavy Weapon isn’t what you’d call a superb game. The graphics look to have been ripped directly from the Flash-based version that debuted a few years ago – which kind of negates the point of playing it on a PlayStation 3 – and there isn’t any real reason for extended play once you’ve completed the mission-based section of the game. That’s if you haven’t given up and decided to play a good 2D shooter by the time that happens.
