The controls are very similar to Robotron 2084 or Smash TV. You control movement with one analog stick and direction of fire with the other. It’s simple and intuitive. So it’s quick to jump into. Sadly it also doesn’t get much deeper from there. Piloting the "Atomic Tank" you move across the landscape shooting down just about everything that moves. You’ll move from area to area doing the same thing over and over and over.

Each level may look slightly different but they all play exactly the same. Tank rolls forward, you shoot stuff down and fire off the occasional nuke. With names like Geiger County, Tankylvania, Napalm Springs and Concussion Coast the whole thing plays out like a cheap action movie, complete with a ridiculous tough guy voice. Imagine Duke Nukem trying to make himself sound tougher.

There are powerups that you gain at the end of each level like lightning, rockets, missiles, and a flak cannon. In a nice touch that these can be improved or taken away by the player after each level, so if something’s not working, you can change it up as you go. All the powerups just add to your destructive power, but the game gets stronger as the levels go by, so it feels like an even wash.

The is also a learning curve problem. Heavy Weapon goes fron insultingly easy to frustratingly difficult. I didn’t take a single hit of damage until the 4th level! It was so easy my girlfriend and I decided to try a little test. I played level one with my eyes closed and the volume down. I told her to tell me if I died. I actually made it through the 1st level with dying. Now that my friends, is EASY. Conversely, by level 8 the game is hard enough to make you want to chuck the controller across the room.

It also needs to be mentioned that the animation (or lack there of) is terrible. Just about all the enemies are planes and just fly in a straight line over your head, with 0 frames of animation. In one level there are dinosaurs (don’t ask) in the background, and they just kind of slide by… again 0 frames of animation. While I’m sure it’s not the case it feels like it was slapped together with out of the box elements, like the XNA starter kit.

For some reason I enjoyed the survival mode better, which is just a test of seeing how long you can last. Course my attention here started to waiver after about 8 minutes or so. Multiplayer isn't much better, just 4 players all doing the same thing. Since you're just moving left to right there's only so much you can do, and everyone just ends up shooting at the same crap.

Pass on this one folks. If anything just download the demo. But even that falls short of value.

3 out of 10

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