Arms (Switch)

In many fighting games, players can choose to get in close and try to pull of their physical combos or attack from afar with projectiles that are typically single shot or slow firing. In Nintendo’s Arms though, the physical and projectile have been combined, the player able to box from a distance as their stretchy arms lunge out across the arena. However, you can’t really say the fists are now projectiles nor can you truly say the physical fighting brings along major combo potential, the fighting system in Arms aiming to find the way to make long-distance fighting its own unique thing.

In Arms, the focus is appropriately enough on the spring-loaded limbs all the characters feature in some form. Your main attack are as simple as launching your left fist forward or your right, the arms extending outward to deliver them straight to the opponent. Timing your attacks properly is the core of the strategy and moment-to-moment play as a result, the limbs needing time to extend and retract and you need to watch and respond wisely to make sure your hits land. A simple guard will block incoming punches without fail, although it will crumble and leave your arms useless for a bit if overused, and more importantly, even grabs are long distance attacks here and will easily snatch up and heavily deal damage to a guarding fighter. With every character having 1000 health points and grabs often dealing 150 or more, the guard isn’t something you can hunker down behind, but dashing and jumping also give you options for avoiding attacks and launching your own. With regular punches breaking through grabs as well, there’s a good system of counterplay found in the basics, and things do continue to get more layered once you start considering other elements of the fighting system.

The specific Arms equipment you pick is incredibly important to your success, many of them featuring special functions that could almost be called unique if the game didn’t tend to offer a few types in a range of elemental affinities. Your right and left hand in Arms can be swapped around for a range of different punching tools. There are a good deal of boxing gloves, but some do a better job tracking the opponent while others might be stronger as the price for putting more of the control in your hands. After launching an attack, you can actually bend the arms to try and hit the other fighter, the game generally having an attack fire towards where the opponent is but it doesn’t necessarily account for their movement after your hand goes sailing towards your foe. Some equipment can help cover flighty opponents or bait them into suboptimal moves. Multi-shots might cover more horizontal or vertical range, the beam weapons keep a small sustained laser active for a bit to force a bit more defense from the target, and some shots have their own curve built in to hit more from the side than the front. You can punch attacks out of the air, some equipment like the Megaton and Parasol great for interception and you can even launch an actual slow moving shield that forces the opponent to try and take more twisted paths towards you.

Characters bring even more depth to the system as each one not only will vary a bit in terms of things like speed and the size of their arms, but special abilities give you more tools to use in a fight. The singer Ribbon Girl can jump around repeatedly in the air. The robotic police officers Byte and Barq features one normal fighter and then a little dog robot that occasionally launches a surprise punch or serves as a spring for Byte to bounce on. The movie star Twintelle can slow down incoming arms with a special aura, letting her get in her counterattacks if she times it right. In fact, Arms is generally very creative with its core cast, their designs taking the simple premise of characters having springs for arms and trying to explore how such a thing could manifest in a wide range of ways. Min Min runs a ramen shop, but one of her arms is based on a Chinese dragon while the other is a winding spiral of noodles. Helix, a gooey experiment to make an Arms fighter, has DNA strands for limbs. Even Max Brass, the chairman of the ARMS League and the guy you have to face in every difficulty of the game’s ARMS Grand Prix as either the final boss or the one precluding some secret fights, has the very champion’s belts you’re trying to win make up his arms.

Arms is generally a very colorful and creative game when it comes to its looks, and while its main musical theme is catchy and strong, it perhaps remixes it a bit too often rather than letting areas have more distinct music.  There is a range of stages for Arms battles to take place in, 15 stadiums to match the 15 characters with each of them having a “home” of sorts, and these can be quite experimental in design. The basic Spring Stadium already has trampolines on its borders, Ribbon Ring has its central area constantly construct boxy areas you can stand on or break through, and Cinema Deux is the road outside a theater where you can jump onto or fight around parked vehicles. However, the creativity can get a bit out of hand, or a thematic idea can lead to an oppressive design. You have levels structured like a large staircase and a deep bowl that can heavily impact how you arms have to be aimed or twisted, but then areas like the Scrapyard, DNA Lab, and Temple Grounds throw in pillars that serve as meddlesome cover. They are destructible but you don’t want to leave yourself open trying to break through them, and then Snake Park takes things in a wild direction with its large spinning tops you can ride around the arena. Some variety in terms of design can lead to matches for more silly fun of course, although that won’t stop them from appearing in single player, but elements like the pillars do play into a little bit of an issue inherent in the arms fighting style despite its depth.

When your arms can launch across most of an arena, distance is preferred, especially since it gives you time to spot what your opponent’s attacks will be in time to counter them. In fact, counter play is such a big factor in Arms that sometimes you’re left wondering why you should be the aggressor at all. Close range boxing can lessen the time for the other fighter to figure out how to counterattack, but that only means you’ll have the same issue. Matches in Arms can sometimes slow down and become pretty defensive. You do gradually build energy for something called an Arms Rush where you can unleash a flurry of powerful attacks should you land it, often able to shave off around a third of a person’s life bar if you land it properly. You can combo into it, but it also gives you such a lead that you can sometimes land a rush and then play safely, stalling out the 99 second timer. There are some abilities that aim to prevent this, Springtron (a robot copy of the game’s poster boy Spring Man) can charge up an electrical pulse to deactivate the opponent’s arms meaning they can’t be too passive against him, and the bulky Master Mummy can slowly recover HP by guarding to try and bait a player into attacking lest they risk him building himself back up.

Stage structures sometimes almost encourage running away and defending, but there are some ideas in place to encourage a bit more action. Items can appear during a match, these actually good at breaking up stalemates as punching a floating bomb towards a player forces them to move or be hurt while a little health spray that heals players in an area is both tempting to go towards but important to keep the other fighter away from. You are inherently a bit limited in your attacking options since it’s all about throwing out punches one at a time, combos very limited and mostly comprising of things like a set up punch and then the rush attack or maybe building up charge in an elemental Arm so you can stun a foe or freeze them briefly for a punch or two. A lot of Arms is about throwing out your best planned punch and seeing how it does, but the follow-ups aren’t too deep despite the mindgames being constant and layered. Reading your opponent and making sure you aren’t making your own intentions obvious are the true skills to hone but matches can still feel a bit slow because your fist delivery system and the defensive options do impede your ability to pressure someone and speed up the fight.

Arms can be controlled in a few different ways as well, but there are some caveats to them. The game sets you up at first with a grip meant to imitate holding your hands out like you’re boxing, this “thumbs-up grip” having you actually punch to launch a hand and bend the controller afterwards to control any curving of the attack. Some actions are harder because they are motions rather than simple button presses though, and while it can at times give you pinpoint precision as well as the ability to duck and weave while walking, it can also have detection issues where you might grab when you want to do a quick one-two or vice versa. Using exclusively buttons on the controller though ends up with the unfortunate sacrifice of having more actions tied to the stick, meaning walking, weaving, or bending punches can sometimes be complicated by the fact you have other actions demanding your inputs from the same control sticks. Both work well enough until minutiae gets involved in more tense and serious fights, and when players do understand their controls well enough to get the most out of them, you can have the kind of fights where you really feel like you and your opponent are testing each other, poking and prodding, baiting and tricking each other in an engaging fight that shows the potential in the fighting system.

Single player offerings and side modes don’t exactly bring much to the Arms experience though. Mainly, you’re tasked with beating the ARMS Grand Prix with all 15 characters, different difficulties sometimes featuring secret final bosses but otherwise they’re mostly a random mix of standard battles plus some of the gimmick styles that also are available in multiplayer. Many of the extra modes are a bit basic sadly. V-Ball is just volleyball where you punch a big ball over the net that explodes if it takes too long to land. Hoops has you trying to dunk or punch foes into a basketball hoop that is a bit more fun if only for how satisfying slamming a person through a big net can feel, while Skillshot feels a bit plain as you and the other player try to punch targets that appear between you where a good lead can compound a bit too easily. Outside of the Grand Prix you can do things like 1-on-100 where you punch easily beaten foes, and Arms matches can be fought with up to four players although it becomes incredibly chaotic when there isn’t room for the regular reading of your opponents and fists fly without much thought comparatively.

Unfortunately, there is one more thing to do in Arms, but it’s something that holds the game back quite a bit. ARM Getter is where you can earn extra Arm types for the cast, this being the only way to earn new equipment for them. By spending cash you earn by playing single player, online, or completing hidden Badge challenges, you can spend some time on the ARM Getter range where you’re punching targets again but for the purpose of getting random equipment to appear. Every character in Arms can equip any hand type, but they only start with 3 each. There are 42 Arms in total, meaning each character has 39 to unlock through this mode, but Arms are also available in objectively superior Plus modes where they deal a touch more damage and can retract a little faster. The rewards are random but lean a bit towards the character you choose to play as for your short sessions in ARM Getter, but if you wish to take the game seriously you’ll need to spend some serious time punching targets over and over to expand your options. You get to set up to three Arms to bring to battle and pick which ones to use at the start of each round from that set, the idea of being able to vary up your options adding some strategy but properly engaging with it is an unfortunately hefty time investment for something that isn’t doing much to entertain you as the target punching isn’t even that difficult.

THE VERDICT: Arms has a wealth of creativity, used for a range of inspied character designs and stages that are interesting if not always the best fit for its fighting system. Its mechanics can lead to some incredible matches when both sides are playing mindgames well, but it can also lean towards players playing quite defensively since it feels quite contingent on counterplay that doesn’t incentivize being the aggressor quite enough. Elements like the items help and the different character abilities can break through, but then solo play and extra modes feel simple and unlocking more equipment is quite a chore for something so crucial. There will be some intense and enjoyable battles, but you’ll be taking the good with the bad to reach those perfect matches that see the game’s systems click in place so nicely.

And so, I give Arms for Nintendo Switch…

An OKAY rating. Arms can definitely be a complicated game that takes quite a bit to master, the tools for fighting often more about how they factor into the considerations you have to make with each motion. Defenses can be punctured, but they can also be so strong that a capable player can weave around your efforts to pin them down. You may mostly have two punches, a grab, and the rush to work with, but other elements impact how those attacks unfold like the equipment. Two skillful, strategic players can have a blast trying to weave around each other, utilizing the unique aspects of their character and their Arms to shake up the fight. But it’s not quite Chess out on this battlefield, commitments to aggression or defense can shift things away from being tactical and end up with on the fly responsive maneuvers that can thin the interesting considerations at play. Arms can grab you with some fights but then you’ll grumble as someone hides behind arena pillars and keeps charging up Springtron’s pulse. This isn’t necessarily a unique problem to this fighting game, but Arms feels like its needs more factors coming together to craft those exhilarating battles while newer players have quite a wall to climb if they want to tap into the more thrilling fights where smart play is key. Arms has a niche for multiplayer fun at least, but the offerings for single player are pretty weak and include things like the ill-conceived ARM Getter that erect a further wall to finding your way to the game’s more strategic battling.

Besides more compelling offerings beyond one-on-one battles with other players, it’s hard to really say Arms need to shake up its core fighting. When it works it can be a blast, but locking those pieces into place can be quite the effort since skill gaps can be quite impactful to how a match unfolds. It’s one reason defensive and careful play is probably so common, it’s easier to not engage rather than trying to be ready just in case the opponent is about to set up a rush attack that will devastate you for daring to be aggressive while they have that on deck. It’s a game with depth for the devoted few who want to plumb it but the novelty of long range fighting isn’t strong enough to make that journey the most engaging one to get to those special fights where everything hits right.