Heatseeker (Wii)

Now if you like flying games you've got three real choices for your Nintendo Wii : Wing Island, Blazing Angels and Heatseeker. If you like cute chickens flying around taking pictures popping balloons then Wing Island is your thing. If you love the nostalgia of flying old WWII planes then blazing angels is for you. And if yuor someone who enjoys the fast, furious and thrilling dogfights then Heatseeker is definitely for you. You play the role of Mike "Downtown" Hudson alhough you only know this from reading the manual. A newbie pilot straight out of school. He gets postioned on Lord Roberts Island a slightly strange air force base built on an Island in what appears to be the middle of the atlantic. This island/airbase comes under attack from rebals which armed with supprisingly high tech planes try to invade the island. The story goes from there moving through more islands to the antarctic and finally to another set for islands where the villian, a dictator who leads the "Oligarchery of Kamcha", is close to declaring war on the rest of the world. You and possibly another 5 planes are charged with stopping them.

The actual game is incredibly surreal as the planes are all scaled up compared to otherthings, you have infinite ammuntion and your kill count can go into the hundreds quite early on in the game but this game wasn't made for realism. It was made for sheer excitement. When you hold the analog stick forward and the planes afterburner kicks in you get a real sense of speed. It is amazing.

The games graphics are ... varied to say the least. The planes look great, the explosions look great and the clouds are great too. At ground level though things don't look so great which is a real shame. Luckily though you don't spend that much time that close to the ground. Most of the time will be spent dogfighting with the large asortment of real planes in heatseeker. It is so satisfying to down an enemy who has been evading you for the past 10 minutes. This is also where heatseeker shows the ace up its sleeve. Impact Cam. Like the takedown camera in burnout whenever you have a definite kill the camera will follow the missile and show the demise of your victim. This doesn't happen all the time and doesn't go on for long enough to detract from the action howeverr it can be turned off at the options screen.

All in all Heatseek is an excellent game which is great to play and uses the wii controls very well. The only real shame is the complete lack of multiplayer or online capibilities. I really would of liked to go into dogfights against my friends. However even that still fails to make heatseeker anything less then one AWESOME game.