Heavy Duty: Back From The Dead?

Whatever happened to Heavy Duty? The planet-defending action strategy looked interesting, but then developer Primal Soft's website fell silent. And has been for nearly two years. Out of nowhere, a new trailer has appeared.

We can always trust you to defend our planet, Gametrailers.

The game was originally due to appear this time last year, but obviously it didn't show up. Now publishers Akella Games are boasting it once more. It sounds a really intriguing idea. Your task is to defend a planet (albeit quite a small one if the zooming in the video above is accurate), starting with a squad of men charging about in stompy robots. The original Heavy Duty website goes on,

"You'll create a planet-wide defensive system to intercept and destroy alien spaceships before they land, and if they manage to slip to the surface of your planet - it's up to you to lead the elite group of robots to crush the invaders, gather some artifacts, research them and produce even better weapons. You'll manage your own base and build new ones."

If you want bemusing, then the feature list on Akella's site offers this:

"Reverse kinematics mean the end of scripted animation and make sure that characters interact with the world on a believable level."

At last an end to those damned kinematics going forward. Ok, I'm probably revealing my ignorance here, but whatever it means, I reckon it sounds important.

Anyhow, the bit that sounds properly interesting about this whole project is this one:

"Engage the enemy in multiple ways from dogfights in the skies with UFOs, to ground-based cleanup operations after wrecked UFOs crash planetside as well as the whole-scale assault of alien bases or the defence of your own."

Let's just hope they release it this time.