The on-rail shooter is a genre we saw frequently on the Wii, rivaling mini-game collections as the genre the system saw most often. It’s easy to see why that was: the Wii remote’s pointer allowed for that type of game to be done more easily than any console that came before it. 

Conversely, the controls available on the 3DS make that choice of genre seem odd. Heavy Fire: Special Operations 3D takes the same kind of shooter you’d see in Wii games like Ghost Squad, but has you aiming with the touch screen, a considerably less intuitive interface.

The game is built around a mission structure, where you select the weapon you want to use and then play through a series of encounters until the level ends. You earn money for completing these missions, which you can use to buy new weapons or upgrade your current ones by allowing for more ammo per clip or a faster rate of fire. You also have the ability to select one of three classes for your character at the start of the game, which give you different bonuses.

The game controls by aiming with the touch screen, firing with the shoulder button, and reloading with the Circle Pad or face buttons. The pace and intensity of this game can result in discomfort from holding the system while using the stylus. There also doesn’t seem to be a way to change the sensitivity of the aiming, which leads to problems in some of the more frantic segments.

Once you get into a mission, the game mostly takes place as a series of scenes. You’re generally not consistently moving, but moving from one stationary point to another, picking off enemies as they pop out from behind the scenery. While you need to take out every enemy, you should be extra careful with enemies who have exclamation points over them, as leaving them be for more than a second or two will allow them to hit you, taking away some of your health. Get hit five times and you fail the level.

This game is hard. You’re going to have to go through levels multiple times to learn the patterns of when to reload and where the exclamation point enemies are likely to pop up. These levels can be fairly long, with no checkpoints, leading to frustration. This also shows off the limitations of the controls, as it doesn’t always seem possible to move your reticule around the screen quickly enough.

Still, I keep going back to this game. Despite its flaws, I’ve had fun with it, and will probably continue to go back to it, trying out a different class or weapon loadout. If you think you can handle an extended period of holding the 3DS awkwardly, and are okay with failing a lot in the process, this is a solid experience from the 3DS eShop.