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Heavy Weapon is the latest Xbox Live Arcade release from service veterans PopCap Games. It’s also the latest game to use the now popular dual stick control scheme, with movement handled by the left stick and aiming on the right. Games like Geometry Wars have made this control scheme popular among the masses, and while Heavy Weapon doesn’t offer quite the same frantic ‘blink and you’ll die’ gameplay, it’s a hectic shooter in its own right.
At 800 Microsoft Points Heavy Weapon falls in the mid-priced category, and it’s a fair enough price point. At its core it’s an old-fashioned arcade side-scrolling shooter, but it’s got decent production values and plenty of game modes that would be missing in bog-standard 400 point releases. These include a 19 mission campaign mode, Survival Mode, Boss Blitz and Xbox Live co-op play.
Gameplay is simple, with each level presenting you with endless waves of air and ground enemies, in the form of planes, tanks, helicopters and the like – you simply have to blast them and survive. Supply planes fly by fairly regularly to drop shield and ammo upgrades, as well as nukes, which can be used to wipe out a whole screen of enemies. Early levels can be breezed through, but things heat up as you progress, and before too long the screen is filled with enemy units and gun-fire.
If you make it through to the end of a level you’ll face a large end of level boss, complete with a health bar and rigid attack pattern. Again, the difficulty of these battles will increase as you move through the game, and loss of all lives here will result in the whole level needing to be replayed – something that is common in games of this type. Successfully completing a mission will reward you with points to spend on ammo and defence upgrades, and these points can be redistributed later on if you think another combination would be better suited.
Experienced players aren’t likely to find the campaign to be overly tricky, but anyone who didn’t grow up playing similar games will struggle to make it through to the end. The Survival mode adds a neat high-score element to the game, ideal for quick 10-15 minute sessions when you’re after a quick action fix, while the Boss Blitz mode simply pits you against end of level bosses.
With the game being playable with four players, on a single console or over Xbox Live, there’s also plenty to do with friends.The Arms Race and War Party modes differ only in how ‘Game Over’ is reached (loss of lives or every player being concurrently dead), but they work really well over Xbox Live. What’s more, the on-screen action seems to increase as the player count does, so with four players the screen is filled with enemies. If you find the single-player game a little easy, these multiplayer modes should offer a sterner challenge.
As with practically every Xbox Live Arcade game that’s hit the service, visually Heavy Weapon doesn’t compare to retail releases, with a fairly basic, almost cartoon-like appearance, but it’s more than suitable for the style of gameplay. The musical score isn’t likely to win any awards either, but it’s suitably dramatic, and there are plenty of cheesy sound effects and voice samples thrown in for good measure. 200 Achievement points are also available for Achievement point junkies, and some require a fair amount of skill.
With Xbox Live Arcade titles you don’t expect experiences that will last for weeks or months, but games that offer solid slices of entertainment every now and again. Heavy Weapon might be distinctly unoriginal in what it does, but it’s a fun, action packed experience that is ideal for Microsoft’s online service. At 800 points it’s priced fairly in comparison to other Arcade offerings, so if you enjoy the free demo, it’s well worth adding to your collection. Just don’t expect anything that could be described as next-gen.
