Heatseeker

Format Nintendo Wii

Developer Codemasters

Publisher Codemasters

Genre Action

6 Comments

Despite putting you in the cockpit of some of the most lethal war machines in history and sending you rocketing through the air at crazy speeds, flight sims are commonly slow, dull and occasionally overcomplicated. Not Heatseeker.

Codemasters is sticking two fingers up a the genre's geeky complications and modelling its Wii flight sim on a balls-out philosophy inspired by EA's Burnout and Black games.

This game's all about darting around the sky at NOTICABLY ridiculous speeds and blowing stuff up with fat rockets. In the typical flight sim your enemy is little more that a black dot in the distance when you launch your lock-on missile and see that enemy disappear.

In Heatseeker, the planes are more nimble and the dogfights are far more close-range. So when you see an enemy they're likely to be close enough for you to hear their jets. You launch a rocket and watch it blaze through the air, leaving a nice thick trail of black smoke.

When it finds its target it obliterates the plane with a meaty explosion that sends shards of metal scattering into the sky. Then for extra satisfaction, you can follow the burning wreckage as it plummets to the earth. Nice.

Codemasters clearly wants to show off these explosions, because the game packs a sweet missile-cam which occasionally kicks in giving you a shaky-cam view from the rocket as it blisters through the air and hits its target.

Obviously, this detracts away from control of your plane which you imagine would be annoying but it's not - it's satisfying to watch.

It's not all air-to-air combat, however, as some planes are equipped with bombs that can be used to wipe out warships in the sea below. What's extra cool is that if you hold down the launch button (B) to fire he bomb, your camera will stick with the bomb and you can manually guide it to its target.

All of the missions we played simply involved engaging swarms of enemies and making them dead, which was good fun be we hope to see more variety in later missions when the final game is released.

We were also given the opportunity to use some of the planes that will be on offer. The usual selection of light and nimble planes versus the heavier slower machines were on offer. And as you work your way through the game you will unlock new planes with increased speed, agility, strength and firepower. Nothing too surprising.

What was unexpected, however, was the primary control system used. We expected the planes to be manipulated like in Wing Island, by twisting the Remote left and right to control yaw, and tilting it up and down for pitch. This method is in there but it's the secondary option and is done on the Nunchuk rather than the Remote, which doesn't work quite so well.

Instead you use the pointer function of the Remote to manoeuvre the plane, pointing the reticule to the left and right to steer and up and down to control altitude. This works surprisingly well and, if anything, is actually easier to master than a tilting control method.

Heatseeker was not the sort of game that would make us jump for joy when we see the first screenshots. But our hands-on session proved us wrong. It controls well, and if Codemasters can cook up some varied mission obejectives that don't just involve killing swarms of enemies, this could be an entertaining arcade blaster.

Heatseeker is due for take off on March 30, so check back for a review soon on CVG.

If you haven't seen the awesome new in-game footage, which shows how the controls work, check it out here.

Mike Jackson