YMMV / Heavy Weapon

• Awesome Music:
  • The title screen/opening introduction music is a short yet awesome rock and roll piece with some over-the-top narration and vocals.
  • It may be very repetitive, but the level music (used for all missions) is actually pretty good.
  • The boss theme.
  • The soundtrack used for the PSN and PS2 versions.
• Breather Boss:
  • War Wrecker in stage 4. If you know how to avoid the One-Hit Kill wrecking ball, it should be a breeze. It comes between the rather annoying War Blimp and the tough Kommie Kong/Gorillazilla. Not so much when you have to re-fight it, though, as it now kicks up rocks from the ground which are not very easy to destroy in time.
  • Bustczar/Head Zeppelin is another example. ALL its attacks are destructible and cannot land a One-Hit Kill, and if you're good, it'll probably be able to use its carpet bomb attack only once. It's a breather because the previous two bosses (Kommie Kong and Eyebot) and the next two bosses (Mechworm and X-Bot) have One-Hit Kill moves.
• Demonic Spiders: Several of the Red Star forces are dangerous, but three of them stand out when it comes to Atomic Tank-killing, mainly because they sport a One-Hit Kill in a game where Continuing is Painful. All three also require that the player divert their attention on them and away from the other mooks in order to survive.
  • Havanski Atomic Bombers are very durable huge planes that drop a large bomb that can not only take a lot of hits, but will instantly kill you (and your whole party, in War Party Survival) if it hits anywhere on the ground. For a large enemy, they also give you a measly 3000 points when defeated (as compared to the less deadly blimp that gives 25000).
  • Romanov Attack Satellites will fire an instant-death laser below them, you have to push them backwards by shooting them away so they don't move towards you while firing the beam.
  • Contact with a Shovak Bulldozer will instantly destroy you, so you have to constantly keep shooting at them to repel them back. Not very easy to do when having to kill Airborne Mooks at the same time!
    • For added fun, the game tends to throw both of these at you at the same time, forcing you to juggle between pushing the Dozers back and trying to knock down the satellites.
• Difficulty Spike: Several. The first occurs in Zamblamia, where you face off against the very annoying Mokum Assault Helicopters, and the Barskov Munitions Blimps, with Kommie Kong at the end. The next level Tankylvania provides yet another one, with the Reflex Fighters, and the first appearance of the extremely deadly Havanski Atomic Bomber. Finally, the ninth level Killingrad introduces two more Demonic Spiders, the Romanov attack satellite and the Shovak Bulldozer, and also contains all of the above mentioned enemies!
• Fridge Brilliance: You don't face any Havanski Atomic Bombers during both visits to Killingrad/Caliber City. The Red Star wouldn't want to nuke their main capital, after all.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Both versions of the homing missile firing helicopters (Grakin and Mokum Assault Helicopters) will fire homing missiles often, and worse still, do not leave the screen until killed, when the boss arrives, or they manage to kill you. They also do have a good amount of health.
  • Czerk Light Helicopters. Unlike the two assault helicopters, this one shoots energy orbs at you and have the tendency to corner you in large numbers, making them irritating to defeat or maneuver. And they always come in combinations with the Grakin and Mokum Assault Helicopters, making all three of them a pain in the butt to deal with.
  • S-34 Reflex Fighters. They fire homing missiles like the two helicopters but luckily leave the screen. What makes them annoying is their deflector shields that sprays unlikable and unkillable plasma shots in random directions every time your spread shot regular bullets hits their shields. Thankfully, their shields are useless against your special weapons.
  • Modified Pickup Trucks and Linstrad Tanks force the player to aim at them sideways. The former is weak and has slow destructible missiles, while the latter has more HP and attacks with indestructible plasma shots. Both of them can be easily dealt with if they appear alone, but since they appear with other mooks alongside, they become a hinderance to the player.
  • Barskov Munitions Blimps. They're big, tank damage for other enemies, and then there's the fact that they blow up into a random shower of indestructible^note Unless you have the Nuke/Megalaser shots when killed and the shower may be impossible to avoid depending on the spacing between the shots. Thankfully there's usually a gap in the shower.^note Or maybe not. If you're really unlucky there might not even be one and the shots can sneak through your defense orbs.
  • Fovraski Cruise Missiles. They're fast, extremely fast, then they do a 90-degree turn and head straight down at the player when they manage to go over their tank. This means that you'll probably be forced to move left/right to avoid these guys or aim directly upwards to destroy them in your crossfire. And they always come in combination with Tachrok Ballistic Missiles, which limits your room to dodge.
  • Another enemy that appears alongside the Tachrok Ballistic Missiles is the Palinskat Ground Attack Fighter. They operate similar to Fovraski Cruise Missiles, but instead of dive-bombing you, they swoop down diagonally and shoot a few energy orbs at you.
• Goddamned Boss: X-Bot forces you to move left and right to avoid his One-Hit Kill Crushing attack. He may not be the toughest boss yet, but he is the most frustrating one to deal with (especially in the PC version), and if you're really unlucky, this boss can corner you and crush you into oblivion. Not to mention, when you destroy both of his arms that block the way, you'll have to condone dodging his eyebeams, which are not a One-Hit Kill but serves as a distraction and can screw the player badly.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Both the level design and bosses. Each level has many different "waves", which consist of a set of enemies. Trouble is, you'll be eventually encountering the same few waves over and over again ad nauseam. And then there's the bosses. Bosses 10-18 are pretty much souped-up versions of the first 9 bosses, usually just faster and with more HP.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • The first four levels are just a warm-up. Then you start to face regular mooks that kill you in one hit. Later levels have enemy formations that are out to screw you badly (Death Ray-firing satellite that you want to aim up at? Let's put them with annoying durable ground-based tanks!)
  • Boss Blitz Mode. You have one life to face all 19 bosses, several of which can one-shot you for an instant loss. Even Twinblade becomes an Early-Bird Boss that can end you easily if you're not careful!
• Porting Disaster: While the PS2 version is far from a terrible game and separates the aiming and moving controls like the earlier well-done Xbox 360 version, as well as including a brand new arranged soundtrack, the aiming controls when shooting diagonally are too sensitive, which can cause you to miss various enemies. This version also lacks the exclusive content from the Xbox 360 version. Averted with the Playstation Network version, which uses the Xbox 360 version as a base (though the music is taken from the PS2 port).
• Most Wonderful Sound: "MEGALASER!!!" Cue Ass Kicking via One-Hit Kill Wave-Motion Gun...
• Scrappy Mechanic: In the PC version, your tank aims with the mouse cursor, AND moves towards the mouse cursor's horizontal coordinates. This makes it hard to stay in one position and attack, and even worse when you have to face against Bulldozers that kill you on contact. Fortunately, it was solved in the console versions, with an analog stick for movement and the other for aiming/shooting.
• That One Boss:
  • Eyebot. It's bad enough that it comes at the end of the level that introduces the infamous Havanski Atomic Bombers. Then it just eats up your few remaining lives with its massive lightning blasts that kill you in one hit. The only saving grace is that its tentacles that shoot the beams are destructible.
  • Mechworm. Unlike Eyebot whose insta-kill lightning tentacles are destructible, there's no way to greatly ease the difficulty for this one. Touching this dude anywhere is an instant death, the shower of rocks and the bombs its segments drop make it tricky to safely move under its arc (especially in the PC version where you move along with your cursor). Try to destroy all the segments on its body that drop bombs? It will gain the ability to pop up under you and causes the worm to spam homing missiles instead. On the second fight, it's much longer, the arc it makes is narrower (giving you less safe room), It starts popping up under you much earlier and pops out of the ground much faster, giving you less time to move out of the way. If you don't move as soon as you see the Wormsign under you, you'll die almost immediately.
  • The Secret Weapon is a very tough fight even for Final Boss standards, not helped by having One-Hit Kill attacks plus Continuing is Painful. It spams instant-death lasers that can curve around in its first phase, and drops instant-death nukes at a pretty decent rate in the second. The third phase is by far the easiest since it lacks a One-Hit Kill... if you haven't lost your lives during the Marathon Level or the first two phases.
• That One Level:
  • Several levels contain That One Wave, often Goddamned Bats paired with Demonic Spiders (or even two or more Demonic Spiders paired up together): Examples are Satellites/Atomic Bombers paired with Blimps or Bulldozers, or Tanks/ICBMs paired with Bulldozers.
  • Boss Blitz Mode. You have only one life to destroy all bosses including the rematches, which is 19 in all. You do obtain powerups after a boss is beaten, but not when you start out. It starts out with Twinblade, who's much more threatening as an Early-Bird Boss thanks to this, and it only gets tougher when you have to fight the plethora of bosses with One-Hit Kill attacks and lethal Collision Damage that spell Game Over if any of those hit.