On Reflection

To be frank, this is good, but Space Giraffe is out there right now, making most other XBLA shooters smell a bit like poo-cakes. Assault Heroes still just about holds its own, though, even though the bosses take the better part of a decade to kill. We’re still killing one now, we’ll let you know when we’re done.

The Score

This is what Xbox Live Arcade is about! Forget the likes of Dig Dug or Frogger, the cancerous retro twins crapping everywhere and making a mess, this is how Microsoft’s service should be done. Assault Heroes is a confident game with its own fresh swagger, a throwback to the early days of Xbox Live Arcade when we saw the likes of Geometry Wars, Outpost Kaloki X and Marble Blast Ultra.

You slowly scroll upwards in a tank, firing at things before they fire at you. Ladies and gentlemen, the worst description of a videogame ever! Yet strangely apt because that’s all there is to it. You can abandon the safety of your tank and travel on foot for double points, grab power-ups and fight bosses. It’s a shoot-’em-up plucked from the Eighties, then dressed up and redone for the 21st Century. It looks sharp and manages to extract as much beauty as it can out of the meagre memory limit Microsoft has imposed. But most of all, it’s an absolute blast.

While it is a shade on the easy side, the two-player online co-op is definitely the best Xbox Live Arcade online feature we’ve seen to date. Like Canadian girls and White Russians, it’s smooth and fun – the best combination of anything in life.

9 out of 10