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Heatseeker

Posted May 16th 2007 by Terry Harjanto.

In my Wing Island review, I mentioned how the Wii controls would hopefully lead to new wave of flight games. Wing Island may have been a bust, but the latest flying game released for the Wii definitely kicks it up a few notches. In Heatseeker you're a jetfighter pilot for the fictitious International Council Navy who goes around busting up weapon smugglers and oligarchial nuclear powers.

If you've been waiting for a realistic flight simulator, you're going to have to sit back down. At its core, Heatseeker is an arcade game that tasks the player with destroying huge waves of air, sea, and land-based enemies in all of the game's 18 missions. Since your plane has unlimited ammo, some missions will have you racking up more than a hundred kills in a single flight patrol. The bogies will outnumber you by huge numbers, but thankfully the odds are evened out by your plane's ability to withstand a number of direct missile hits before exploding like a firework.

Occasionally, the game tries to mix it up by giving you an objective that doesn't involve turning something into debris. Sometimes you will need to fly in close to scan a plane to determine if it's the target you're looking for. In other cases, you will have to protect a mission-critical craft. In the end, however, it's all the same. After you scan that plane, you are, more often than not, told to blow it out of the sky. And how else do you protect an important objective other than by shooting down anyone trying to destroy it? The gameplay is essentially repetitive: target an enemy plane, shoot it down, repeat as necessary. But this is no more repetitive than classic arcade shooters like Afterburner.

How repetitious the game feels will also depend on what kind of pilot you are. If you load out your plane with long range missiles and sit back to pick off the enemies, the game might end up a little boring. But the real fun is in letting things get hairy: hit the afterburners, come in real close with the short-range missiles armed and your finger over the trigger for the cannons, and you'll be you twisting and turning through the air to get a bead on your target. Mix this gameplay with the impact camera that cuts to slow-motion shots of your plane avoiding missiles by the width of a hair or to close up shots of your missiles impacting your target and you're in for a one very intense game.

There is also more variety in terms of details. The 18 missions will take you to four different locations ranging from the Antarctic to a fictitious archipelago in East Asia. The three different difficulty levels not only affect how much damage your plane can sustain and how many enemies will engage you at once, but also which bonus objectives are available. Achieving these objectives — usually something along the lines of "blow up this far away target in a certain amount of time" — will unlock planes and weapon loads which are helpful in the later and more difficult missions.

To help achieve your mission objectives you can fit your aircraft with many different weapons such as missiles of different range, multiple types of bombs, and even a powerful cruise missile. There are a large number of jets to fly including the F-15 Eagle which has one of the best air-superiority weapon load out and the F-18 Hornet which can easily take down naval targets with its anti-ship weaponry. As you progress through the game you will also be able to unlock very modern planes such as the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning. Not only are these the latest planes to come off the assembly line but they're also equipped with a stealth capability that prevents enemy missile-locks. Each plane also has at least one alternative version with different paint jobs, improved stats, and different weapon loads.

If that's not enough variety for you, you'll be happy to know that the game also offers two different flight modes and three different controller configurations. The arcade flight mode combines the roll and yaw—your side to side movement—so that turning left or right is nice and easy. The professional flight mode gives you individual control over roll and yaw so that you can do a barrel roll(!) and other fancy maneuvers.

The three controller configurations assign control of the plane to the remote, the nunchuck, or the nunchuck's analog stick. The default remote option works the best. With the remote pointer, your aim on the screen is indicated by crosshairs appearing on the screen. You move the crosshairs up and down to control pitch while moving it left and right affect your plane's yaw. Rotating the remote clockwise or counterclockwise will roll the plane.

Tilting the nunchuck to dive, climb, and roll sounds like a good idea but doesn't work well. Designed to mimic a real flight stick, this controller configuration lacks any sense of physical limitation and feedback and thus feels awkward and disorientating. The final controller configuration uses the analog stick and feels just as if you were playing with a regular gamepad. The lack of physical hand and wrist movements may seem like a small problem, but it really makes a difference since less of your body will be reacting to and involved in the game.

Gesture commands are also used to pull off special maneuvers that will break missile lock so that you can get away without a scratch. The problem is that the controllers don't always register your movements and you'll often have to repeat the motions a few times before your plane will perform an inner loop or make a sharp downwards dive.

Heatseeker is all about blowing things up and the graphical effects contribute to a wonderful sense of satisfaction every time you take out a target. The explosions and missile trails look as if they are from a Hollywood movie. The planes are rendered in great detail, including shadows, animated wing flaps, and air brakes. The skies look absolutely stunning; thunderstorms will have you flying through dark clouds as lightning bolts courses through the air. On a sunny day, the light from the sun bouncing off the clouds look so majestic you would think that you're dog fighting in heaven itself.

When you get back down to earth, however, things start looking a little ugly. Islands are mostly covered in low resolution textures and horrible looking sprites that are suppose to be trees and vegetation. Most buildings look very simple and so do land and sea-based vehicles. Chances are, however, you'll be blowing these things up anyway so it's not a problem that will preoccupy you for long.

Fitting the nature of a fast-speed arcade game, Heatseeker's rock music is all about high-paced drums and loud guitars which meld perfectly with the sound of missile explosions, firing cannons, and the high-pitched whine of jet engines. The game's radio chatter and briefings are also acted out by decent voice actors.

Overall, both sight and sound contributes to the game's excellent sense of speed. When you hit the throttle your vision will tunnel and you'll hear the engines revving up. After a few seconds of pushing the afterburners, the screen will flash white, your vision will blur, the sound of thunder will crack forth from the speakers: when you break through the sound barrier, you'll know it. The sheer intensity of the sonic boom will make it seem as if your plane is more of a thunderous force of nature than a piece of advanced military hardware.

The only thing that is holding this game back are the obvious signs indicating the game is a multi-platform port. The mixed graphics, second-rate gesture controls, and the fact that skipping the in-game cutscenes requires a loading screen is a dead give-away that the game was coded with the PS2 and PSP in mind. Even more telling is that if the remote's batteries cut out, the game won't pause or warn you like nearly every other game on the Wii.

Steady Beat - Clear to engage. Weapons are hot!

You will spend at least 15 minutes in each of the game's 18 missions but about half of them will have you in the air for twice — or even thrice — that long. Trying to unlock the helpful bonuses also extends the game to a decent length. All in all, the game has a lot to offer to anybody who enjoys a good explosion. There are some issues with the game's presentation but these are overshadowed by the fun gameplay and tantalizing visual effects. Best of all, the different flight modes and difficulty levels can make the game simple and easy or more complicated and challenging depending on how big a bite you think you can chew.

Posted in: Reviews