	Heatseeker
	Developer: IRGurus Interactive Publisher: Codemasters Release Date: Out Now Players: 1	Words By:
Back in the 80s when arcade machines were dead popular, one flying game became incredibly popular, and sucked away many people’s hard earned pennies. Afterburner was a fantastic game for its day, and the recent PSP sequel has shown that the game’s style is still fun to play today. Of course, Namco’s Ace Combat series have been around since the early days of PlayStation, and again are still very popular – in fact there have been six sequels spread over PlayStation and PlayStation2, with a further sequel coming to next-gen machines later this year. In steps new kid on the block Heatseeker, the only real competing game to Ace Combat on consoles, and it’s fair to say it has a lot to live up to. Heatseeker, although in the same genre as Ace Combat, is quite a different game. Where Ace Combat is quite serious and almost sim like at times, Heatseeker has more in common with Afterburner, albeit with strict missions and objectives. You play as a rookie who goes by the call sign of ‘Downtown’, or Mike Hudson to his mum and dad, and you have been sent to a beautiful tropical island base to help protect it from the growing increase in pirate activity and hostile criminals with lots of firepower and very fancy enemy planes. OK, so the story is about as original as a new Mario game, but that’s not really very important here, or indeed the point of the game. The meat of the game is the missions, the objectives within them and the many different types of planes that you’ll fly during the game. The controls are good and you always feel connected to the planes. You have the expected setup such as pitch, throttle, airbrakes and weaponry, which comes in air-based lock-on missiles, machine guns or bombs for taking out ships. Missions don’t really vary much throughout, and basically centre on blowing up either moving or static objects. Large ships, submarines, vehicles or of course other planes are there to be taken down, and once you have shot everything down, you move onto the next mission. A cheesy voiceover chats to you throughout the missions, and explains what you need to do at the start of each one. Missions are split up via checkpoints so you are never far from a respawn point, which will stop you getting too frustrated with the sometimes challenging requirements. Heatseeker's proud feature is its Impact Cam, which actives when you fire missiles at a plane, and shows you close ups of the enemy plane exploding - and in slow motion too. Whoo. It’s all great and everything, but since Namco have been doing it for years, and it worked much better in Ace Combat, it’s probably a feature you shouldn’t be so vocal about promoting. The problem is that when it activates, it’s usually during a very hectic section when the last thing you want is your concentration broken by a camera change and a little cut scene. Imagine the Takedown camera in Burnout, and you not being able to turn it off – it’s like that. Instead they should have opted for how Namco used it, where the player holds the missile fire button down to follow the missile into its target. That way they can choose when to use it instead of being forced upon the player. That being said, the game does offer some enjoyment, and although the eighteen missions don’t really vary much they are entertaining at times. Just don’t expect the game to progress or develop much beyond what you see in the first couple of levels. Graphically Heatseeker is nice enough, with some reasonably decent environments, plane models and explosions, however comparing it to its competition, it has a very long way to go to match the quality that Namco have been producing with Ace Combat. Overall Heatseeker should satisfy you craving to recreate Top Gun, but if you are a hardened Ace Combat fan you can’t escape the fact that this is a simple game done on a small budget with not enough variation to keep you hooked.

Best Bits
- Flying the planes around the environments is quite graceful
- Explosions and dogfights are exciting

Worst Bits
- Not nearly enough mission variation
- Not quite the polished package that its competitor is


by: DC