Heatseeker

"A simple flight game that really gets the juices flowing."

Chances are that when you first discovered Heatseeker, chances are your first reaction was “sweet, this game is on Wii!”. Many Wii owners have always wondered how the wiimote could be implemented for a flying game. Would it rock, or would it suck, especially in comparison to the classical controllers? Well, Heatseeker lets you make your own decision on the matter, since it is available for both PS2 and Wii, with several control schemes for both controllers. But We'll look into that later. What about the game itself?

Before any criticisms are brought to light, it's good to know exactly what Heatseeker is. Do not go in thinking it's anything like your conventional flight sim. It does not try to be even remotely realistic. It has a heavy arcade feel to it, and removes most of the standard challenges, slower paced realistic dogfighting, and most of your plane's bells and whistles in place of raw, uninterrupted action and destruction. Where most flight sims pit you up against dozens of enemies, Heatseeker sees you fighting 50-100+ enemies per mission. You get unlimited ammo, all your jets are powerful (so are the enemies, takes 2-3 direct short range hits to take one down) and you can perform a nice list of stylish maneuvers in order to dodge an incoming missile.

But did Codemasters pull off such a bare bones fight combat game well? Well, gameplay wise, yes. At first glance, the game looks repetitive and dull, since your objective (from title screen to the credit roll) is to blow stuff up. However, you will find yourself coming back for more, as nearly all the missions have various juicy rewards for playing them at least twice (ranging from new planes, to upgraded planes with snappy new paint jobs, to bigger, faster weapons) and the carnage you create later in the game is simply addictive. The game gets your juices flowing, as all the action is fast paced, and the game employs various tools to give you a sense of destruction (the biggest being the impact camera, which I will touch on later).

Even with all this fast paced destruction, surprisingly long missions, and constantly overwhelming numbers, the game manages to keep the difficulty in check. Even on the hardest difficulty, you will not find yourself getting frustrated often. The missions are littered with checkpoints, giving you plenty of room to experiment in order t find the past course of action in completing a goal. The difficulty levels should really be seen as how intense the action is, not how harder the game becomes, as you will never find yourself struggling to defeat enemies.

However, the gameplay cannot distract you from one of the game's larger flaws. While planes look gorgeous, and ships, vehicles, and effects all look pretty nice, the environment looks hideous. The skymaps and cloud layers (of which there are usually two, the higher one indicating the “operational ceiling, or top of the playing area) look fine, but the ground looks plain and muddy. The water is even worse. It's just a strong blue mesh. The water does not react to sunlight at all (in fact, the planes are the only things that seem to have shading any more advanced than lambert) and does not really give you an idea of how high you are (usually calculated by the height above/below the first cloudline). Take Over G for the 360 for example. That game had fantastic water effects. Really put you in the game (since most missions in both take place in the middle of nowhere). The ground textures do not seem to map well with their meshes. Cliff faces roll right into grassy hills, roads and pathways look muddy and undefined, and the buildings look isolated with no real connection to their surrounding structures.

The best part of the visuals is the impact cam. Basically, every once in a while you get a replay (or live) view of the plane getting destroyed. It's similar to Burnout Revenge's crash camera, where you get slow motion replays of cars you drove off the road into various solid objects. While only some of the impact camera replays are actually slowed down, the camera relies more on tumbling and angles. My personal favorite is when the moment of impact is frozen (matrix style) and when the speed resumes a huge piece of the plane comes flying at the camera. It really adds to the excitement of the game. However, you will, sooner or later, have to deactivate it. Once you start using long range weapons, the camera can become very disabling, since in such c case the control of the plane is taken out of your hands for up to 10 seconds (depending on how far the target is) which can be disastrous in a defensive mission. The impact cam's other function is not so disabling, however. Sometimes, you get slow motion views of your plane dodging a missile (using one of the aforementioned maneuvers) which actually helps since it seems that all other locked on missiles during this replay become void and disengage.

The impact cam also plays the role of being one of the few nastier glitches Heatseeker may throw at you. You may occasionally have the camera fail to return to your plane, which will force you to reload from a checkpoint. It's not the biggest in game glitch however. Community uproar has occurred since release over the fact that some missions run into large errors when trying to get the award for completing it. It's a good thing that Codemasters included a list of unlockable cheats that would allow players to overcome this issue. That is, of course, if your willing to buy them.

One of my biggest gripes with Heatseeker is the fact that the game has hidden fees you must pay to get the game's full content. In order to get the cheat codes (which vary for every game) you have to either guy them off their site, or use their 3 bucks a minute 1900 number. The codes are cheap, but that's beside the point. When I buy a game, I am under the impression that I am getting the entire game for its retail value. I shouldn't have to pay MORE money for the rest of the game's experience. It's a sign that Codemasters is trying to milk as much money as it can from customers, Probably to counter the lower price tag of the PS2 version of the game.

Even with all it's flaws, and some even smaller ones not worth mentioning in a review (like the completely uninspired naming, since Heatseeker, is a very obvious name, and common character codename sin the game include Downtown, umber, and Eyeball, snore) Heatseeker still manages to be a very fun game. The action is astounding, the game is simple and easy to pick up, and the wii controls worked perfectly. You have a huge amount of control over you plane, and you don't have to think as much in order to make your plane do what you want.

I suggest you rent it. Unless you love fight games and want a black sheep to add to your collection, the game should offer you all it's joys within a rather short period of time. Here's hoping it sets the standard for the future of flight games on the Wii entertainment console.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/07