It's been fairly surprising, given the amount of love and respect that the Burnout series has garnered over the years that someone hasn't tried to ape the concepts even in large part -- especially since the very engine and tools used to make the game have been available under license from their creators for years now (or at least were before EA scooped up Criterion and their RenderWare engine).

Now, we're not trying to suggest that Aussie developer IR Gurus is biting the style straight from Burnout or anything, but Heatseeker does use the RenderWare engine, and it does feature a decidedly arcadey take on the concept of air combat, something that Namco's Ace Combat series has dominated for years. In fact, the description we used in the strapline up at the top of the page there -- y'know the whole Burnout/Top Gun thing, isn't that far off.

And that, believe it or not, is a good thing. While the build of Heatseeker that we've been playing through is still undoubtedly early (complete with debug menu before the main title screen -- something we love, IR guys and gals, thanks for that), it does demonstrate an almost reckless approach to taking down both air and land threats with actual planes from Boeing and Lockheed Martin in a way that feels oddly at home with the RenderWare engine.

Much of the Burnout tone is probably set by the game's Impact Cam, one of the main selling points and, fortunately, one of the chief reasons why it's fun to just blow the holy hell out of everything in the sky that isn't painted by your HUD as a friendly. By holding down the fire button, you can track a missile or bomb as it reaches out to kiss its intended target. Just the fact that you have unlimited numbers of both weapons (and, yes, machine guns too if that's your thing) should hopefully give you the idea of what kind of approach IR Gurus is going for here.

Which, honestly, suits us just fine; plenty hailed the developer's efforts on Heroes of the Pacific, which was far more of a sim-like experience, but everything about Heatseeker is decidedly more pick-up-and-play. Even the controls, which either handle pitch and drift for you or allow you to do it all yourself along with proper yaw in either Beginner or Advanced controls keeps things easy for someone who wouldn't normally play a game like this.

So the goal, then, is to shoot lots of stuff, which is why you're given unlimited ammo. Most of the time, you'll start out with something simple, like a patrol or recon mission, and then a steady stream of increasingly more tense situations in the near-future world of increased terrorism (no, the story isn't terribly powerful, nor the pre-level briefings that are supposed to set the stage, as they just feel like a chintzier version of Ace Combat's intros) start to stack up.

It's a simple approach, sure, and you'll be hearing Downtown -- your callsign -- about 9 billion times per mission if our limited experience is any indicator, but again, it lowers the barrier of entry. Even stuff like breaking on missile locks or dumping chaff/flares is done with the L2 and R2 buttons. Throttle is controlled with the right analog stick (hold up long enough and the afterburners will kick in and give you a nice bit of motion blur at the edges of the screen), and controlling your wingman is as simple as using up or down on the d-pad and pointing at something to have them attack or defend it, or form up on your wing.

Thanks to 16 craft in increasingly more agile, speedy variants that have to be unlocked, along with their more than three dozen weapons to toy with, there's actually quite a bit of variety in things. You'll learn which planes are quick and agile enough to handle air superiority vs. more lumbering but precise bombers (and yes, we do me those sexy stealth ones); nearly all of the craft have some minor differences, and some are especially pronounced. Fifth-gen fighters that mix stealth features with huge loadouts and ridonkulous agility just make you feel like a badass while flying them.

Though the game looks and sounds a little rough right now -- seemingly the plight of nearly all RenderWare games -- it does at least offer some decidedly arcade bits. Bright and colorful, with the same volumetric clouds found in Heroes the game at least delights in throwing some heavy color use at the screen along with all those motion blur, and the exploding planes are a nice little touch. The ground detail is painfully blah at this point, though. We also dug little touches like the sound of explosions rushing back to normal speed after the Impact Cam finished or the little plink of the bombs being cut free to drop to their target.

In all, we were pleasantly surprised with Heatseeker. Given our general dislike of Heroes of the Pacific, we weren't sure IR Gurus' attempt at something a little more turn 'n burn would be worth it, and while it's still a little on the unpolished side, our early impressions are that the game is something special -- if only because there are so few pure arcade flight games out there these days. We'll have a full review in the next few weeks.