"A fun, if short, game (just a little worse than the Arcade version)"

A fun, if short, game (just a little worse than the Arcade version)

Nothing's quite so much fun as the pointless shoot-em-up, where you don't really have anything to do but shoot everything until you win or die. Such a game is Heavy Barrel, a somewhat standard shoot-em-up, in which you just shoot everything that moves.

In Heavy Barrel you are a soldier in one army, who infiltrates an enemy base with nothing but his machine gun and some grenades. Luckily for you the enemy has many great guns just lying around for you to pick up. One shot will kill most enemies (except things such as tanks), and one shot will also kill you, so you need to try to keep the on screen enemy population low by killing them all. Every once in awhile, an enemy will drop a key, which can then be used to open a chest, which might just might have a piece of the legendary super-weapon, Heavy Barrel, a weapon so powerful, they had to break it up!

The main challenge in Heavy Barrel is to simply stay a live long enough to win the game. The game isn't all that long, and if you can manage to keep alive, you can beat it in about a half hour. Of course, since staying alive is the entire challenge, you might have to play this one awhile before you can pass it.

The graphics in this game are considerably below the Arcade version, but this is the NES, and I didn't expect miracles.

The sounds in the NES version of Heavy Barrel are passable, but I miss the voices, such as the ''HEAVVYYYYYYYYY BARREL!'' and whatnot. Oh well, it wasn't that big of deal.

This game is fun to play, but a little hard in places, and there just isn't that much to do, it's just a mindless shooter game.

I rated Heavy Barrel a 7 because it's a fun game, but not a great one. The NES version of this game is just a tad worse than the Arcade version, but not enough to affect the scores.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/09/00, Updated 04/09/00