Heavy Mach in Review – Heavy Firing Action

We know in some countries, people pay to smash up plates and bowls in a room to de-stress.  Now you can de-stress in a fun and less messy way by playing IndieAn’s new blast them all off tank shooter game, Heavy Mach. 

Heavy Mach features some beautiful graphics that combines with simplistic yet challenging game play.  The game is split into 6 missions with multiple stages (4-5) within each mission.  A total of 60 stages are provided and can range in length.  The developers have promised more missions in their frequent upgrades.  In the latest version 1.12, an endurance game play stage has been added.  This is where you attempt to survive as long as possible with the onslaught of all kinds of enemies with varying fire power. 

The objective of Heavy Mach involves moving your tank and destroying a large variety of tanks, helicopters, and heavy artillery before ending the stage by blasting off giant boss enemies.  Your enemies fire different types of weapons, from basic straight-shooting rounds to swerving heat-seeking missiles.  You are however not left in the lurch with nothing to defend yourself.  Besides your tank’s armor you have the ability to jump.  Jumping can be upgraded to a double jump, which allows you to tap the jump level a second time while in midair.  Not only is this ability useful in avoiding falling into various gaps in the platforms that appear along the route, but also for dodging missiles, lasers and other fire power that the bad guys throw at you. 

You can also upgrade your tank along the way.  There are temporary upgrades to weapons and armor that appear in the form of boxes that fall from slain enemies.  Permanent upgrades come from experience points gained from destroying enemies.  You have a choice of upgrading your movement, armor, or weapon strength, with a total of 18 points to be gained and spent throughout the game. 

Different types of weaponry can be collected and added to your tank.  Some examples are heavy-damage artillery rounds with short range, droplet bombs that shower an enemy with shells from the sky, and laser beams that shoot quick and straight.  Some weapons work better on certain enemies than others.  A tip is to save your heavy artillery until you need to fight the big bosses.  Otherwise, you will never be able to defeat them with just basic rounds of bullets. 

Controls in Heavy Mach are simple and intuitive.  Moving your tank involves left/right tilt of your iPhone.  Tap on your targets to fire weapons at them and to jump, you will need to hit the lever at the bottom left hand corner.  To switch weapons, tapping the weapons icon next to the boost lever will cycle through your available weapons.  With the latest update, the menu bar at the top left hand corner is now working and you can save and exit your game or simply pause it to scratch your bum without being killed! 

Overall Heavy Mach is an exciting “blast them away” game.  You will definitely be addicted to it just like I have.  There are still small kinks in the game though which the developers should iron out, like except for big bosses, you can actually move your tanks right through enemy vehicles without any ill effects.  Plus, your tank never turns around, so you can’t fire behind you.  Nor does Heavy Mach seem to keep track of your score, which is strange for such games.  It would also be nice to have varied backgrounds and a variation of attacks from different combinations of enemies.  Other than that, Heavy Mach is one of the games that you should have on your iPhone, especially with its current sale price of $0.99!  If you’re still hesitant, by all means give the free lite version a try first.