Heavy Duty

Akella’s booth had some great titles, but none held my attention like Heavy Duty. Yep, it’s a shooter, but it’s not your typical first- or third-person game. When evil rises in this war-torn world, there comes a point where the only place to turn is to fight back. And when you do, the enemy doesn’t know what hit ‘em.

Take control of a four-legged, building-sized robot. It’s equipped with missiles and machineguns, but that comes with the territory. The best thing about the game is how versatile your robot is. Is there a sniper parked on top of the mountain? You could ignore him. I doubt his tiny bullets will hurt the mech you’re controlling (he’s about 1/500 the size of the mech!). You may still want to get on top of the mountain, crush the little bugger and see what else is up there.

So do it already. Walk over to the mountain. Don’t stop, keep going. Other shooters stop the game right there, but in Heavy Duty, your mech automatically adjusts itself, clamps onto the mountain and climbs it!

Mech movement is slow, but your crosshairs can be changed as fast as you can move the mouse. In the demo I played, my only enemies were humans driving tanks and other military vehicles. Can you imagine fighting them? They couldn’t even begin to defend themselves. I likely could have crushed them with one of my mech’s legs had I positioned him properly (I didn’t, and the jeep kept driving underneath).

Additional touches like explosions, robotic sounds, and a beautiful engine helped to push Heavy Duty ahead of many of the shooters at E3.

Everything is destructible. I can blow up trees if I want to. Shoot boulders just for the fun of it. Obliterate a few buildings to warn the enemy of what will happen if they don’t back off. And it all happens with some of the most realistic robot and destruction effects I’ve ever seen. Heavy Duty is due out Q4 2005 – if they can achieve visuals like this now, just imagine what they will have achieved when the game is finished. (Graphics are usually one of the things that developers work on up until the end of the game’s production.)

Best Akella game and quite possibly the best mech shooter at the show, Heavy Duty will blow the competition out of the water when it’s released this fall.

For All E3 2005 Previews