Codemaster's Heatseeker is a run the of the mill arcade shoot 'em up that quite simply fails to bring much new to the table in terms of graphics or playability. While not a complete and utter waste of time it is terribly difficult to defend the game's $50 price tag. There's just not enougn meat on this Top Gun-like bone.

You play the role of Mike “Downtown” Hudson, a pilot who has just left flight school and is on his first live mission. With the help of your allies: “Divot”, “Rumbler”, “Angel,” and “Eyeball”, (bonus points if you can figure out the woman pilot?) you attempt to save the world against General Bae Jung-Tae and Admiral Golovich.

The game uses a rather unique control system. Instead of using the nunchuck stick to climb and descend, you use the wii-mote and adjust a crosshair on screen to fly up and down. The nunchuck stick is instead used to accelerate and brake. The controls take some getting used to regardless if you are playing in "Arcade" or "Professional" mode.

Although we all know there are graphical limitations with most Wii games, Heatseeker looks particularly weak on this system. It looks more like a poor Dreamcast or PS2 game. There are lots of jaggies and polygons that don’t seem put together well to form an object. Explosions look poor as well; there is an ‘impact cam’ that shows a missile destroying an opponent however there’s no "wow factor" when you blow up another plane. It's hard to get too excited about an over the top arcade game full of explosions and high speed chases when the graphics don't look the part.

Heatseeker also lacks any form of multiplayer support. It is unfortunate that there is no dogfight multiplayer mode as this would have enhanced the replay value tenfold. So while the game does offer real aircraft licensed by Lockheed and Boeing, including the T-45 Goshawk, F-16 Falcon, F/A-18 Hornet and the F-117 (stealth) Nighthawk, you never get to do battle against your buddies. You're going to have to play this one solo.

There are 18 missions to play through in the campaign mode -- the missions demand that you shoot down planes, bomb boats, and so on. When flying around on the easy levels the gameplay can be summarized thusly: accelerate to target, lock on target, fire missile, watch impact cam, blow up plane, target next enemy and repeat. The problem is that the game isn't all that challenging even if you increase the difficulty level.

There really aren’t a lot of options in the game. Once you’ve played campaign mode, you can go back and play individual missions if you just need to blow more stuff up. These individual missions unlock bonuses such as plane packs and power ups. Other than that, once you’ve played campaign mode, unless you have a burning desire to unlock the ‘ultimate weapon’, there is very little replay value here.

Heatseeker claims to be an arcade fighting game -- which it is, so in that regard...mission accomplished; however it is also very easy with a low presentation value and limited gameplay options. There’s just not a lot here to get excited about, despite the fact that there are very few games like this currently out for the Wii...a mediocre game is still a mediocre game.