Heavy Fire: Afghanistan on the PS3 with Move was a flawed, but fun change of pace from all the modern-day shooters that have come along since the original Modern Warfare, with its on-rails approach. It was also a big leap forward from the lacklustre Heavy Fire titles found on the WiiWare service. Sadly, while Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D gains a nice 3D visual effect, the gameplay falls back to the lacklustre days of old.
If you stick it out and fight your way through the first level, you’ll earn yourself a wad of cash to purchase new weapons or upgrades with. Larger clips, faster reloads and automatic fire are essential to success, and once a level is completed in the campaign you can replay it over and again for additional funds to unlock even better weapons and upgrades. But even with the enhanced arsenal, the challenge doesn’t ease up a bit. Each of the six levels will need to be (frustratingly) replayed multiple times over to learn the enemies’ patterns to complete them.
Sadly, it’s mostly all downhill from here. The muddy graphics don’t showcase the power of the 3DS very well, even though the added 3D effect brings a nice sense of depth to the title. The high action found on the PS3 just doesn’t make the transition here; opting to use the standard methods we’ve played over and again for decade’s ad nauseum: clear a few waves of enemies and more forward, rinse and repeat. With minimal sound effects and onscreen action to be found, there’s little to keep you coming back for more, especially when you consider that online leaderboards are nowhere to be found – something that would have added a huge amount of replay value with the high degree of difficulty at hand.