The same developer that has brought you Crazy Chicken: Pirates 3D and Outdoors Unleashed: Africa 3D has just released a new game for the Nintendo 3DS. To be clear, Teyon has developed a game that is now sitting in the Nintendo 3DS eShop called Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D which is a rail shooter played in the first-person perspective. Considering that this game was originally released as a WiiWare title back in 2010, is there enough fire power to make this 3D remake entertaining?
In Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D, you’ll be playing as a soldier sent to Somalia. First you begin riding along with a turret as your weapon as exchange bullets firing against your enemies. All of a sudden, your vehicle explodes and you must depend on your pistol as you run across the city.  The controls behind this specific Nintendo 3DS game involves the use of the stylus on the bottom touch screen. When moving the stylus around, you can see the cross hairs change positions accordingly on the top screen.  Shooting is executed through either the L or R button while reloading your weapon is done by simply moving the analogue pad or pressing the B button.  Such controls are easy to deal with and handle.
As you’re firing away, you’ll notice an exclamation point that appear over your enemies’ heads which indicates that they’re about to shoot at you. This is similar to the Virtua Cop games where you have a certain window of time before you get damage. In either case, you’ll want to take out the enemies with the exclamation points immediately. You must also note that you can only withstand five hits before you end up with the game over screen. This can happen frequently when you have enemies that are spread out and are about to hit you at the same time. It is unfair and annoying especially when the reloading does add some delay.
Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D is very challenging all throughout the missions you encounter.  While the first mission can take a few attempts in order for you to complete, later ones can take even longer with a number of retries. Because there is no checkpoint, each game over will have you starting the mission all over again.  This can be frustrating considering that the levels themselves are quite long, thereby increasing the probability of a game over. Once you finally complete the mssion, you are evaluated based on what you achieve, specifically your accuracy, time, combos, and amount of destruction within the level. All these factor in your overall score, which then leads to your ability to unlock new weapons.
The quality of the graphics in this game matches that of the Playstation 2, but just with the added 3D effects, that is if you choose to turn that feature on. While the menu screens do benefit from the 3D, the gameplay itself looks pretty adequate. Nonetheless, Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D is presentable for a handheld game with a relatively smaller screen.
In terms of the audio, there is only one musical background that plays and that’s during the title screen. Other than that, there’s not tunes playing at all. I guess it helps to add some realism and authenticity in the Middle Eastern experience. You get to hear the gunfire noises over and over again from both your enemies and comrades. There isn’t much variety in what you hear, even if you include the voices screaming all throughout. Still, the audio does its job of providing the appropriate atmosphere and impression.
Even though Heavy Fire: Special Forces 3D does fall short of providing a lasting impression, there is still some fun to be had. Its price of $4.99 in the Nintendo 3DS eShop is decent if you are wanting to get a simple rail shooter. Casual players should consider this game while serious ones should at least try out the demo to help make their decisions.
