Assault Heroes is a modern take on a top-down shooter that will make the old-school gamer in you gibber with delight. Think of it as the spiritual successor to Jackal, the Konami game released for the NES back in 1988. You and optionally one other player (either over Xbox Live or using a second local controller) pilot heavily armed vehicles in search of a secret underground lab - and that's all the story there is, and frankly, all the story there needs to be.
As in all top-down shooters, you have two primary resources - movement and weapons. Your vehicles - you begin in a jeep, progress to a boat, and also spend a lot of time on foot - are moved with the left thumbstick, while your weapons are fired by pressing the right thumbstick in the desired direction. In fact, you'll find that you are so good at maneuvering and firing, since the layout is almost exactly the same as Geometry Wars, that the game is fairly easy at the "Normal" difficulty. The only difference here is that your jeep and boat have a larger turning radius than your ship does in Geometry Wars – you'll find you need to adjust how you juke and dive to avoid danger. I find it works best to continue moving and dodging in one general direction, while under heavy fire, so that you don't have to turn your vehicle around.
You can complete all 18 of the levels in Assault Heroes in anywhere from two to four hours your first time through, depending on what difficulty you play it at, and how much Geometry Wars you've played. Difficulty aside, these few short hours will pass you by in sheer bliss – your vehicles of doom will dispense firepower in satisfyingly loud and effective ways to countless ground troops, tanks, helicopters, jets, rival jeeps, ships and on and on. You begin the game with five of the six weapons – a Minigun, Flak Cannon, Flamethrower, Grenades, and a screen-clearing Nuke – and you can collect Missiles in the field. Each of the first three weapons can be upgraded from level one to levels two and three by destroying certain enemies and picking up the power-ups they drop . The Minigun is a fine weapon for all uses – it hits reasonably weakly, but fires very quickly, and is easy to aim. The Flamethrower, while graphically disobeying the laws of physics, makes short, easy work of the soldiers and lighter vehicles that come too close. Grenades allow you to destroy bunkers and are equally effective against bosses (try launching all of them as fast you can), while Nukes give you a brief pause in the action by slagging a screen full of baddies at once. Finally, the Flak Cannon is the weapon of choice for armored opponents – it fires slowly, but packs an unbelievable punch. It is difficult to aim, since none of the weapons have any indicator of exactly where they'll go (except the grenades – hold down the right trigger for a second before letting it go), so you'll have no cues as to where your Flak Cannon shot will go until you let 'er rip.
Graphically, Assault Heroes pleases – the graphics are at once vibrant and colorful, without being cartoony. The colors will be a breath of fresh air after the purple, brown and black palette of Rainbow Six: Vegas! Since Xbox Live Arcade titles are restricted to 50 megabytes in size, you'll notice that the models that make up the objects in Assault Heroes are not complex, and that the textures are not vastly detailed, nor is the lighting model cutting-edge. These factors will not matter to you at all – I promise. The game is great fun to look at, and busy with spent shells, debris, weapon effects, and fire. The sound quality is perfectly acceptable for coming in at 47.65 megabytes – the memorable warbling yells of the red kamikaze troops will bring the headless, bomb-handed suicide bombers (and their screams) of Serious Sam to mind.
