Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank is PopCap’s best Xbox Live Arcade offering yet.
Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank is a scrolling shooter, set in a war-ravaged world. An evil force suppresses the freedom of the people. It’s your mission to pilot the atomic tank, and drive back the invasion of the Red Star army. The control scheme is incredibly simple, as it only uses the dual analog sticks and the right trigger. You can move your tank horizontally with the left stick, aim and fire simultaneously with the right stick and unleash a nuke with the right trigger. This will clear the screen of enemies, so use it when you really need it.
The aim of each level is to shoot down as many enemy aircraft as you can, and defeat the boss at the end of the level. When the level begins, the amount of aircraft on screen is manageable. However, things get really hectic as the level progresses. You will be attacked by all manner of aircraft and weapons. Some examples are jet fighters, helicopters and bombers. In terms of what they will be shooting at you, expect missiles, laser cannons and even nuclear bombs! You need to shot the nukes before they hit the ground, otherwise its game over for you. The game spans nineteen missions and the difficulty scales nicely. The first few missions are nice and simple, but you will notice the difficulty gradually increasing.
One of Heavy Weapon’s greatest features is the ability to “pimp your ride”. At the end of each level, you are given one upgrade point to boost your tank. You can spend these points in one of six categories; energy shield, homing missiles, laser cannon, regular missiles, flak cannon and lightning bolt. Each weapon has three levels of power, and by the end of the game, you will just have enough upgrade points for a full-powered tank. If you’re having trouble on a level, you can re-allocate your points before the mission begins. If the level three laser cannons aren’t doing the business for you, it’s simple to re-invest the points in another field. Apart from these six tank upgrades, there is an extremely powerful laser cannon that you can obtain for short periods of time in missions. Some aircrafts drop delicate parts that can be used to construct the laser, which destroys everything (excluding bosses) with a single shot.
Along side the story mode, you have survival and boss blitz mode. Survival tests how long you can go in one continuous level. Boss blitz mode, unlocked after completing the story mode, has you taking on every boss in the game, one after the other. The bosses are fun to fight, and quite diverse. As well as traditional-type bosses, like battleships and blimps, you get to fight a giant wrecking ball and a mechanical gorilla. Unfortunately, many of the bosses are reused once you get halfway through the game.
Xbox Live support is Heavy Weapon’s main attraction. You can play in arms race or war party mode with up to four players. Arms race gives each player three lives, while war party ends when every player is dead. You have infinite re-spawns, but the more you die, the longer you take to re-spawn. Either mode is fantastic to play, especially with four players. The action is so intense, and it can be difficult to see the screen with all the rockets and bombs flying around! It is also very accessible, as you can jump into a game that has already started, as well as joining from the beginning. Leaderboards track the amount of time you’ve survived and the number of kills you’ve scored, so you can see who is the greatest amongst you and your friends.
The achievements are fairly well balanced. There are some freebie achievements, like firing your first nuke. Then there are some moderately challenging ones, like finishing the single player campaign, but the most difficult it gets is completing boss blitz mode.
Visually, Heavy Weapon is just like its gameplay: simple but effective. Everything is very colourful and cleanly presented. The artistic style has a very hand-drawn look to it, and it suits the game well. Despite the fact that bombs are dropping and nukes are going off left, right and centre, the art style manages to keep it looking very fresh and fun; a world of difference from the reality of war. The enemy crafts are well designed and detailed, and the backdrops are lovely. Its mostly cliché surroundings; snow, jungle, cityscape, etc, but they add a lot to the feel of the game. A nice little touch is the visual change of your tank as you upgrade it. You will see the extra rocket pods and laser cannons as you add them, which is a nice touch of consistency.
Heavy Weapon’s sound is fairly dull. The menu music plays in a continuous loop, and gets repetitive quick. The music even loops when you start playing, but thankfully, it’s drowned out by the in-game sounds. The sound effects don’t go much further beyond the noise of your weapons firing. Overall, the audio is underwhelming. A greater variety of tracks could have done the game a great deal of good.
Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank is a fantastic scrolling shooter. The core game is very simple to play, but highly enjoyable. This is even more evident if you play co-operatively over Xbox Live. All this is reinforced by the bright artistic style. Audio factors let the game down, but that’s no reason to miss out on playing this game.