Tries to not be Ace Combat. Succeeds.
* Missions vary between attempts sometimes
* It looks okay
Minus:
* Annoying music
* Noisy
* Unlimited missiles/bombs
* Wing-men don't think for themselves
* Artificial difficulty
* Cockpit computer woman won't shut up
* Impact cam
* Poor handling
When you think of flight games on the PS2, you immediately think of Ace Combat. And so you should, go and play one of those unless you're extremely interested in why you shouldn't play Heatseeker. In which case keep reading.
First things first, is it like Ace Combat?
No, it's trying to be different (which is good), but IR-Gurus have done it in a way that harms the game more than helps it.
I have to admit, when i started i looked at the low scores in disbelief. The first few missions do a great job of dragging you in. Unfortunately the further you progress the more the game falls apart.
For a start the controls; you still control the pitch and roll with the left analogue stick and you still have the rudder on L2 + R2, everything else is different. The problem with this is not only do you often find yourself trying to do something with the controls you're used to from AC and fumbling your current target. But also the layout means certain things can't be done simultaneously unless you have a third hand.
Say you want to speed up, turn and scroll through your available targets while doing so. Forget it, you can't do anything except fire and steer when you're adjusting the throttle which is on the right analogue stick.
To say Ace Combat is more realistic sounds odd for what is an arcade-type experience. But for the purpose of comparison it is. Heatseeker is very much more old-fashioned in the sense that you have rigid goals and tasks which must be carried out as the game tells you, rather than at your own leisure.
Each mission is carried out in a series of stages. For example the first part will be to protect a carrier fleet, the second part to shoot down a jamming aircraft, the third to destroy some subs and so on. These objectives are presented to you in sequence and there's a checkpoint between each of them to keep your progress up to date should you fail.
The problem with this is, you can often find yourself in an unwinnable situation where you return later to defend an ally for a second time after it was bludgeoned heavily in the first encounter. In these situations the only option is to start the mission again and keep restarting until you get the desired level of health remaining after the first stage.
This leads me neatly on to one of the two 'Plus' points i gave the game. The missions aren't always the same every play, or even between retries. Sometimes you'll get a couple of bonus targets on an attempt that you wouldn't get at other times. Sometimes the enemy force is stronger or weaker.
However this can also be a flaw being that sometimes the odds are stacked against you more than others.
The biggest flaw though is the incoming missile warning. When you're fired upon, the screen lights up red and informs you that a missile is incoming. When the missile reaches a certain distance you'll get a single shoulder button or combination flash up which you must press in order to avoid the missile.
The reason this feature sucks is because the next control input MUST be the shoulder button. Even if you have to steer to avoid crashing into something, or are just lining up a target and wish to fire at that moment, if you do not make your next button the one in the warning then you'll get hit.
The game would rather you avoid a missile and crash into a mountain than let you steer first then sort out the threat.
Again the game can push you into unwinnable situations where you have a time limit to complete your mission but keep getting missile warnings throwing you off your target. The only choice you get is whether you want to run out of time or get shot down.
Other points of annoyance:
You have to hand-hold your wing-men. They're completely useless unless you constantly tell them to attack.
The "Impact camera" which follows your missile and shows you your target exploding is done in real-time, so you can quite easily crash or get shot while you're out of your plane. A stupid feature which thankfully can be turned off.
Your plane isn't reset when the game comes back from a cut-scene, so if you were on a bomb run and heading for terra-firma when it started, you've got a much smaller chance of pulling out of it before the game gives you back control.
Not much freedom. The game area is a 'bubble' with a low altitude cap and not enough space to roam. This can make dogfighting a pain when you keep getting re-inserted due to drifting out of the boundary.
The difficulty level is purely artificial. The enemies don't actually get any harder to chase; they just take more missiles to shoot down, or take longer to get a missile-lock on. The 'bosses' have health bars and require a ridiculous number of missiles to take them down.
Your cockpit computer woman must announce EVERYTHING like a bad sat-nav.
Controls swing wildly between slow & stodgy and twitchy & over-reactive.
Still here? Seriously, go and play Ace Combat 4, 5 or 6. They exist, so there is NO reason to play Heatseeker. Even if you've finished them several times over you'll still be in with a shot of having fun.
The only F present here is frustration.