PopCap is best known for their frenetic puzzlers, but you won't need too much brain power to play Heavy Weapon. Nor do you need particularly swift reflexes. At first, this game is quite easy. As you quickly learn the best strategies and warm up to the controls, you'll find yourself advancing farther and farther into swarms of bombs, missiles and energy bullets until your inevitable demise. Once you've beaten the 19 missions, you can meet that inevitable demise in Survival Mode, which gives you all the enemies and power-ups in one long succession of destruction.

From the intro, which explains why there is but one lone Atomic Tank versus the entire assembled forces of evil, through to the game play and menus, Heavy Weapon is infused with all of the paranoia of 1980s USA. The Mission Briefing screens are a perfect example of the dark humor evident throughout this game. For example, Mission 6 is Tankylvania.

Tankylvania's primary export is Scary Movies. "Not even darkest night can conceal the enemy from the brilliant, searing light of atomic justice!" Then, under the cut-out of the nation of Tankylvania is a hyperlink that says Click here to invade! Ouch! What a scathing indictment of US foreign policy! And in such a great game!

The mechanics are fairly simple. With your mouse, you control a cross-hair that resembles a biohazard symbol. On the ground, your Atomic Tank will attempt to follow the cross-hairs. This is rather easy to work out, although at first, controlling movement and targeting with the same control is a bit difficult. The game offers full screen and windowed mode, and if you accidentally drag the mouse outside the window, the game will pause until you refocus. This last feature should be in every windowed game that has a mouse interface.

To fire, press the left mouse button. All of your primary weapons (bullets, rockets, heat-seeking missiles, lasers, flak and lightning) are tied to the left button. You can improve your weapons by picking up drops from the white helicopters (Don't shoot! Those are your allies!), or by allocating what amount to experience points between missions or after restart to your five different weapons and the defensive balls. Each weapon has three levels of power, so you can choose your favorite configuration for maximum devastation. The different weapons are significantly different enough that it really does matter how you configure them, but there doesn't seem to be a "best" configuration, so you can set it to your own preferred playing style.

Occasionally, the white helicopters will drop a nuclear bomb. When you get one of these, you can press the right mouse button to unleash a nuclear hell on the enemies. Oddly enough, devastating nuclear fire doesn't seem to affect yourself or your allies' white helicopters, although it will annihilate every enemy and bomb on the screen as well as obliterating the landscape in the background. Look, it's a giant propaganda billboard! Ker-PLLLOOOOMMM!!! Now, it's a blackened, twisted skeleton of its former self. It's the details like this that make this game stand out.

The demo is the full version set with a limited time to play. When time runs out, or before then, you press the Buy Now button to get the unlimited version with updates, patches, etc. without having to download anything else. That's really nice, and I liked this game a lot, but I balk at the 20 dollar price tag. For a game like this, I would easily consider spending 10 dollars, or even 15, but 20 bucks is stretching my credibility a bit. However, I am a cheap, miserly sort. $19.95 is a good price for a new game on the shelves.

Not much else can be said for this game. The premise is simple and fun, the execution is bug-free and excellent, and the production is well-polished. This game makes me laugh out loud at times, curse at others, and reminds me of the swaggering bravado that vested a heart of fear and paranoia in 1980s America. Of course, we can all laugh about it now, right?