Review: Heavy Fire: Special Operations

One type of game that seems to succeed really well on the Wii is the light-gun shooter. This could have something to do with the fact that the pointer functionality on the Wii remote is deadly accurate compared to the guns from the old school arcade machines from back in the day. It also gave opportunities for series like Resident Evil, and Dead Space, to try out something new and unique with their respective franchises. Teyon has decided to jump onto the bandwagon as well by releasing their own take on the genre entitled Heavy Fire: Special Operations, exclusively for the Wiiware service. Can a game like this succeed on the downloadable front?, let’s find out.

Developer/Publisher:Teyon
Genre: Arcade Light-Gun Shooter
Platform: Wiiware
If you like: Shooting random groups of terrorists, blowing stuff up, and getting points for it.

Let’s face it, most storylines in light-gun shooters are vague, and only really give you one reason to play through to the end, and Heavy Fire is no exception. Basically, a rebel group of terrorists are trying to take over Somalia, and it’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Each scenario plays out like this, move from one area to another, take out all of the enemies onscreen, then rinse and repeat until the mission has been completed. The concept is to keep things simple, and to keep the player entertained throughout the entire experience, and this game hits the mark on both of these attributes pretty well.



If you haven’t figured out by now, the control scheme is about as simple as can be. Point the target at an enemy, press b to fire, and shake the Wii remote to reload. My only gripe here is the reload mechanic, I have found that pointing offscreen to reload is much faster and easier to do than using motion controls, but everything else feels tight and responsive for the most part. Graphics are a little on the bland side as far the environments are concerned, the explosions and destructible portions of it help break up the monotony a little bit, but not that much. Sound effects are good, the lack of any music however(other than some heavy metal at the beginning of one level) really takes away the feeling of any sort of tension in the later parts of the game.

Ranking up as many points as possible is the only way to survive, and here’s why. As you acquire points in each level, they go towards unlocking new weapons, and unless everyone out there is a superb marksman with a pistol, getting through each stage without the help of a new and more powerful weapon each time is going to be a chore to say the least. Don’t worry though, there are a few different things that all of us can do to improve our scores. What the developers did here was they awarded bonus points for those of us who decided to do stuff like shoot down a certain amount of enemies in a row, destroy parts of the environment, take out leaders of a certain group, and so on. This unique leveling system may seem like it was tacked on at the last minute to add some variety to the gameplay, but I thought it was a cool idea that other games in this genre should consider trying out.

Heavy Fire can be completed in less than two hours, and there is a little bit of incentive to play through it more than once. You can play through each level in co-op mode, but honestly, this will add maybe an extra hour of gameplay at best. There are four medals that can unlocked, one of which can only be accomplished with a second player. A secret code will also be given to you upon completing the game, which can be used to post highscores onto the official Heavy Fire website, and that’s about it. Not sure why this idea was chosen over an online leaderboard system, still, any form of replay value for a budget title like this is much appreciated.



Heavy Fire: Special Operations is a short lived, action packed, arcade style shooter that is fun while it lasts. Anyone looking for a quick fix of some good old fashioned arcade shooting fun should not pass this one up. (B-)

 - Matt H.