Heavy Weapon was  a game I had seen on the Playstation store the week it came out, and kept wondering whether or not to buy it, at last I’ve got my hands on it, and, it definitely isn’t the sort of game I had expected. The game costs the average £7.99 and to be honest, I think it should retail around the £3-4 region, as this is by no means a new game, it has been out on the Xbox 360 for quite some time, and the PC since 2005, another thing is, there isn’t much in way of content, but I will get onto that later.

The gameplay in Heavy Weapon is a very reminiscent mix of Gradius and Space Invaders, Gradius for the amount of explosions, weapon power ups, and general mayhem happening on screen, and space invaders for the staying at the bottom of the screen and attacking the top. As I said previously, the lack of content really boils down to the gameplay section and how the missions repeat themselves after the ninth. There are your basic modes, mission, survival and boss blitz. Mission mode has 19 missions, each lasting around 5 minutes with a boss battle at the end, these 5 minutes could be the some of the most frustrating moments of your life, with one hit kill nukes, wrecking ball bosses, missile strikes, kamikaze planes, energy bombs, this game is hard as hell. Survival mode, is your bog standard ‘if you die that’s it’ affair, and can get extremely challenging towards the 12 minute mark. Boss Blitz, is just where you take on the bosses from the game in order, with no breaks. The game also has an online mode, which doesn’t really work very well in my opinion, the screen gets overcrowded, and if one person has a bad connection then the game will lag, which makes it pretty much unplayable, if you do get into a good game however, its hard as hell, as the game throws absolutely everything it has at you.

Storyline, seriously? What could you expect?

Graphics wise, the game can’t really be put down too much, as, it is an old game, but, for a Re-release at full price, they aren’t up to the likes of Super Stardust HD. The game is a 2D sidescroller, and it runs incredibly smoothly, the detail put into the sprites is good, and the explosions and weaponry look fantastic (when they aren’t being used against you.) The backgrounds in the game are well drawn, but unfortunately looped, it doesn’t show up too badly, but it would’ve been nice to have a full background for the whole stage rather than seeing the same sign twice. There are Sub Backgrounds, which contain things like; A yeti, people eating ice cream, a ghost, an Eskimo, Various road signs, Russian soldiers, A gorilla and the list goes on, they are pretty distracting, but still put a smile on your face, especially the people laying on the beach, while a tank shooting down 20 or so planes drives past. As I said, this is a pretty old game, but the first thing that came to my head when I played this was ‘this looks like an iPhone game.’ The main menu also looks like a flash game, with classic blue and white gradients, it looks a tad unprofessional, but it’s not really a problem.

The soundtrack is good, if not a little repetitive, it is a heavy metal style soundtrack with harmonics, power chords, heavy riffery and hard drums, some stages have full length tracks that loops perfectly, others have short 10 second sections that will loop a bit to clearly. The sound effects are nice, they are crisp and aren’t distorted, and the sound of a one hit kill nuke dropping will worry you even in the most ‘relaxing’ parts of the game. My only real gripe with the game’s audio would be the repetitiveness, all of the explosions (with the exception of the nuke) have the same sound effect and your tanks guns have the same machine gun sound, and nothing different for lightning bolts, lasers or the missile powerups, which is rather disappointing, but again, not a big problem.

That’s the thing about Heavy Weapon, there aren’t big problems, just lots of small personal gripes and the cost. The difficulty may be a bit much for some people, but people raised on Megaman and Gradius, Heavy Weapon shouldn’t be a problem, and in most cases, the bosses are easier than the level leading up to them. Starting out, you will either be good or terrible at this game, but with a bit of practise, Storming through a level and taking out absolutely everything will become second nature. The amount of time playing this game could vary between how you are feeling, if you are determined to play through a tough game, you could play this for about an hour, but if you just wanted to kill a few minutes, this game has it covered with survival mode. I thoroughly enjoyed Heavy Weapon, even though it was frustrating as hell at some points. Despite the fact that the game is overpriced, it’s worth a look at when it is in the sale, or even if you just check out the demo.

9/10

Dean Case