An extremely lenient targeting system makes fragging the enemy even easier. It seems like you can aim relatively near jets, boats and embankments yet still deliver critical hits. If that sounds too arcadey for you, then you'd better hop back over to your number-crunching flight sims. Reality has no place here, and that alone could make or break your perceptions.
Further entrenching the game in arcade territory is its overall control setup. Instead of left and right banking the plane (or doing a barrel roll), they actually turn the entire aircraft. This makes pulling off complicated moves like loops, rolls and 180 turns a bit more difficult than experienced players might be used to. On the flipside, those just wanting to blow crap up might get into the groove a bit faster, what with no previous flight experience and all. Basically, vets will need to unlearn some fancy moves and just be content with shattering hundreds of bogies.
There have been a lot of comparisons to arcade classic Afterburner. The emphasis on action is the same, but pretty much everything else is unrelated. You're not on a straight path, you're not confined to one screen of events and your jets actually change as the game wears on. But even with all those limitations, Afterburner managed to captivate thousands of casual and hardcore gamers - could the same be true of Heatseeker? Possibly.
All three versions are due in March, but as for which one will reign supreme... well, we'll have to spend more time navigating Wii's motion controls and PSP's on-the-go mission structure before we can make that call.
