Sgathaich: Arms (Nintendo Switch)

By sgathaich0 on June 28, 2017 • ( Leave a comment )

Last time I looked at this game it was during the global test punch, but now I’ve had time to get a grips with the game proper, and I still love it (or at least I did till after the second day of owning it when I woke up with sore arms for the rest of the day, but then loved it again Monday when the pain was fully gone).

Nintendo Arms (photo Bago Games)

Arms is the first true Switch game I own, Breath of the Wild was originally going to be a Wii U game and Mario Kart 8 Delux is an improved version of the original Mario Kart 8. This means it was built for the console. Arms is another game that looks *profanity* weird. A boxing game where people fight with springy arms (I believe I described it before as amping it up to the Nintendo degree), and a very large number of different arms from standard boxing gloves, to dragons that fire lasers.

Each of the characters are just oozing with personality, right down to their movements, Twintania strides forward with her hands on her hips confidently while Springman just oozes the feeling of the underdog giving it his all, mind you we don’t get much info about the world of Arms, but then you dont really need to , and not in the way of Splatoon where the back story was discovered in hidden objects revealing it was a post apocalyptic setting after humans died out (yeah everyone else does bleak deserts Nintendo did 90s squid kids with bright colours).

In the game you get a little bit about the character, their own personal arena and that’s about it, also not too much info about this world of where people can suddenly get the power to use spring loaded punches, but then often with a Nintendo game you don’t need that, just enjoy the craziness (before inevitably looking too deep and finding an incredibly dark story, or Nintendo dark as I call it. No sign of that just yet though)

The controls as mentioned in the test punch can be done in a number of ways, you can use a pro controller (basically normal controller) or use the joycons and actually punch things (which is how I hurt my real life arms) playing it that way does actually count as exercise. It can however when you lose your cool… you can mess up, doing the wrong movements which gets you more angry, you need to remain cool and calm while playing this. I have heard some people say at higher levels of play they prefer the pro controller for more reliable movements but I have yet to try that.

Against the computer you find the usual issues, they are able to react faster than a human can and you yell pointing out such a move shouldn’t have been doable because of this and that, but that’s standard fighting game issues. I also felt there could be some balancing issues, some initial set ups work better than others and heavy characters seem as usual a bit weaker, there are some improvements but the top tier characters will probably be seeing the nerf bat in the coming months. I also felt the game was too focused on dodging and blocking and less on attacking, to the degree that it was first one to punch, loses (once again something I hope gets patched)

In grand prix mode you face 10 fighters and at the end win a cup, there are various difficulties though you only get the real ending on difficulty 4 or more (of which you need to do to enter ranked mode but haven’t tried that) most of these are a best of 3 standard fight, but it gets switched (pun intended) up sometimes, so you may have to face your opponent in target shot for best score, maybe slamdunking the opponent into a basketball basket or simply a game of volleyball (WITH EXPLOSIVES!). Winning matches will give you coins which you can spend on playing a mini game to unlock more arms.

Party mode however is where the game shines, you go into an online lobby and face random people in random matches, all those fights I mentioned up there, you can do them online, as well as free for all brawls ( which can be annoying when you feel ganged up on while another stands back and lets everyone beat each other up) or a co-op fight against the final boss (WHO HAS 6 ARMS!)

My issues aside Arms is an incredibly fun and crazy game, for what I feel to be my first true Switch game it’s very enjoyable and here’s an important piece of info ITS GOING TO RECEIVE FREE ADDITIONAL CONTENT, next month the non final boss will become playable with more characters,stages and probably arms to come aswell….. so we will probably receive some balance changes. If you own a Switch, this is a great game to own and I will see you online… well unless I end up doing so much I hurt myself again.