The last few months have been pretty good to Live Arcade disciples, with high-quality remakes like Doom and Street Fighter II hitting the service, as well as a wealth of great originals like Small Arms and RoboBlitz. Of course we've seen out fair share of rubbish rush-jobs and archaic games that nobody cares about, but overall, it's been a good couple of months. And if you ignore a couple of those particularly crappy games *cough* Ms Pacman *cough* then you could say that they ended the year with a bang, with the release of another premium grade original: Assault Heroes.

Unlike so many arcade games that are old-school gameplay coupled with old-school graphics and presentation, Assault Heroes presents a highly polished, graphically impressive experience that manages to keep the action enjoyable, yet tough enough to keep you on your toes and constantly striving to do better. Sticking with the games of yore homage, Assault Heroes has what could generously be called a story that certainly isn't going to win any awards...something about being the last survivor of a special ops team tasked with finding a secret underground lab, one which seems to spawn a lot of giant robots and death-dealing apparatus, so closing it down is probably a reasonable idea.

To facilitate its closure, you'll be equipped with a rugged 4x4 vehicle with an arsenal of weapons. Your three primary termination devices are a minigun, flamethrower and canon, and each one can be upgraded three times for enhanced elimination abilities. Each weapon has unique strengths and weaknesses – the cannon is strong against buildings and large tanks, but weak against smaller targets like infantry – and picking the right tool for the job is essential to your success. Aiming and driving is a challenge at first, like Geometry Wars the left stick navigates while aiming the right will cause you to shoot in that direction. For weapons requiring less finesse, you can throw grenades (also aimed with the right stick), or unleash a nuke to clear the immediate area, which is a godsend during some of the crazier battles. It all works really well, and after a few minutes you'll be blasting through hordes of enemies like an expert.

Assault Heroes is a top-down vertical scrolling shooter for its vehicle-based sections, with locations ranging from war-torn cities to the ocean (your 4x4's cruise control turns into a hovercraft, apparently!), and the visuals are amazing for such a small game. Trees will burn down if you use the flamethrower near them, you'll spot a giant plesiosaur swimming beneath you, and that isn't even touching on the epic boss battles you'll encounter regularly! Like any good old-school shooter, these battles pit your tiny truck against every kind of absurd enemy you can imagine; giant mechanised spiders, humungous submarine crabs and, um, a moving wall bristling with weapons, amongst others. These battles are some of the toughest to date on the Arcade, and will really test your abilities to the max.

It's lucky, then, that your little 4x4 blowing up isn't necessarily the end of your adventure. Not only do you start with multiple lives (and more can be collected during your battles), but if the truck gets, er, mucked up, you'll simply bail out and take the fight to your foe on foot! Granted you're about as weak as a Labour showing in Federal elections, but if you can manage to survive for longer than Mark Latham without collapsing under pressure, you'll get your vehicle back along with all its upgrades, which is handy! Perambulatory plodding serves more purpose than this however; each area has an enemy bunker you can infiltrate on foot to hunt for extra lives and bonus points too.

The mission mode in Assault Heroes is surprisingly short, and one can only hope that a second campaign is released via the Marketplace in future. There's three difficulties to try and Hard mode will certainly keep you busy, and in addition to this there's support for both local and Xbox Live co-operative play. Having two players is both a blessing and curse, although there's a nice co-op attack which deals a nice bit of damage. Local co-op seems to be problem free, but the Xbox Live play is, in a word, broken. When attempting to start a game, Assault Heroes will routinely stall at the "waiting...” screen, requiring you to quick back to the dashboard and try again. The issue affects some people almost completely (this reviewer has yet to get a game working), while others get the game to work on its first or second attempt. There's been mention of a patch, but weeks after release a fix is still forthcoming.