1st Impressions: Heavy Weapon is an outstanding side-scrolling shooter that is both challenging and a blast to play.
The Bad: Achievements are hard to come by, game is hard.
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After a long and successful run on the PC, "the vehicle of oppression" aka Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank comes to the Xbox 360, and it's one of the best arcade games out right now. One thing you'll notise right away is that Heavy Weapon plays just like the classic old-school shooters, but with more modern graphics and features. Honestly, Heavy Weapon is a ton of fun to play, no matter who you are. You play as an atomic tank that can be upgrades and can fire nukes at enemies. Once you start the game, you are bombarded with enemies. Planes, tanks, helicopters, suiside bombers, rockets, you name it, it's here. The gameplay is actually very simple: shoot the bad stuff, avoid getting shot. That's pretty much it, until a well-crafted boss battle get's in your way. These boss battles add even more variety to the gameplay, and keep gamers thinking they're playing one of the greatest old-school shooters of all time, when their really playing PopCap's modern classic.
The deeper you go into Heavy Weapon, the harder it gets. You do get an upgrade point that you can use to add additional weapons to your tank, but you need to choose wizely to get past the later levels. In addition to the stellar single-player mode, there is also online co-op for up to 4 players and a survival mode, and a boss battle mode where you simply take out all the bosses you faced in the single-player game. All of these additional modes as well as the stellar solo mode make Heavy Weapon a must buy for fans of old-school shooters. It is truely a superb game and an early front-runner for the best Xbox Live Arcade Game of 2007. Do yourself a favor and buy Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank. You'll be glad you did.
Gameplay: It's old-school shooter goodness in a moder day game. It truely captures the feel of an old school arcade classic.
Graphics: It looks really quite good and has tons of explosions on screen many times.
Sound: Dropping bombs have rarely sounded better than they do in Heavy Weapon.
Value: It's 800 M$ points, but it's worth them easily.
Final Thoughts: I'm gonna kill that rocket-launching monkey!!!