Heavy Gunner 3D, a fixed first-person space shooter from Com2uS, is available from the app store. Despite its smattering of big-time weaponry and rocking soundtrack, Heavy Gunner 3D ultimately fails to excite or hook us with its short game play and repetitive missions.
Heavy Gunner 3D Pros:
- Impressive and explosive effects
- Beautiful backgrounds
- Pleasing 3D modeling of the weapons and enemies
- Heavy rocking soundtrack theme fits perfectly
- Local achievement system with 50 achievements
Heavy Gunner 3D Cons:
- Determining enemy location difficult without excessive radar usage
- Gameplay got a bit boring early on
- No online connectivity -- as surprise for Com2uS
Heavy Gunner 3D has a fairly extensive backstory that serves to flesh out the reasoning behind the game’s violence, but the multiple pages of tiny text are as difficult to read as they are to follow. Fortunately, you don’t need any of that information to get on board with the game. You are positioned behind dual turrets as swarms of alien enemies appear on the horizon. Eventually, they are coming for you, but not if you take them out first. With two beastly weaponized arms at your disposal, you blast away as waves of enemies continue to appear. Campaign mode offers 35 levels, with a specific goal in each level to kill a certain number of enemies, survive for a specific amount of time, or kill the boss. There are three difficulty levels (Normal, Hard, and Extreme). An additional Challenge game mode is available, as well as 5 unlockable Infinite modes. Survival tasks you with trying to stay alive through 50 stages of play similar to Campaign mode, while the Infinite modes see you facing off against enemies in 5 different environments where you try to stay alive as long as possible.
Your ship and weapons are upgradeable, with 8 different weapons and a single ship upgrade. You earn points for blasting bad guys, which you can swap for weapon purchases and upgrades such as faster reload, greater bullet capacity, and quicker cooldown. The weapons, while noisy and effective, have some control oddities. Your initial machine gun arms have two independent reticules, which makes effective aiming difficult as we simply cannot get both thumbs to work together. One of the reticules is often in no-man’s-land. Of course, this presupposes that both reticules are functioning properly. There are times, often after reloading, where one reticule simply won’t move or fire unless we lift our thumb from the screen and retouch. This can be a great annoyance and it makes the game feel flawed, whether it’s a design issue or not. Fortunately, other weapons work better. Our favorite was the Avenger HMG, which utilized a single unified reticule, though it wastes its entire load at the touch of either button. There is a short reload period that can be reduced through upgrades. It does not require precise aiming, as it pretty much blasts anything in front of it. We recommend it wholeheartedly, as we used it through almost the entire campaign. Its power is seen most clearly in boss battles, as it usually required only 4 or 5 rounds of fire to down the big baddie, as opposed to other weapons which seemed to take forever.
Graphically, the game looks pretty good, with great explosive effects, beautiful backgrounds, and nice 3D modeling of the weapons and enemies. Though the enemy models look a bit old school, they seem to work in this instance. Of course, most of this is obscured by the near constant firing and exploding occurring in the gaming area. The soundtrack is one of the brightest spots in the game, fitting the heavy theme perfectly. Sound effects are also effective and fun. The controls, as stated, didn’t seem as if they were used to great effect. The Avenger HMG only requires a quick tap on either of the dual-stick fire buttons to activate. This could have been accomplished with a single, smaller button without infiltrating valuable screen space. You can choose to tilt or touch to change your view. The default is tilt and we preferred it to the alternative. A sensitivity slider is available to tweak it to your desired level.
A small radar map at the screen bottom is crucial to finding enemies. Unfortunately, we spent as much time staring at the bland radar as we did at the actual gaming area, as determining where enemies are in the 360 degree space can be difficult without it. A shield health bar and hull health bar are also at the screen bottom, but we were only in any significant danger on one level where we tested out a new weapon that wasn’t nearly as effective as the Avenger HMG. Otherwise, the game was smooth sailing to complete and got a bit boring early on. In fact, the most difficult levels were the ones where the radar was malfunctioning, intermittently turning to snow and obscuring our view of the enemy’s location. Local and online rankings are maintained for Survival and Infinite modes, and you are graded on the Campaign levels, giving you a reason to replay to improve your scores. A local achievement system with 50 achievements also gives you a reason to keep playing, which is good because we’ll need one. These aspects give the game its only replay value, unless you feel like taking out some aggression on alien scum.
Heavy Gunner 3D is available for $2.99 in the app store, which is possibly a touch higher than we’d expect to see it, though we do feel that this is an acceptable price. Com2uS, which has released amazing online multiplayer games like Homerun Battle 3D and Sniper vs. Sniper, just doesn’t hit the mark this time, resulting in a 3-Dimple ho-hum experience.
