Review for ARMS. Game for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 16/06/2017
Bringing innovation to a genre like that of fighting it does not seem to be too complex a thing, and yet very few so-called "breaths of fresh air" have been seen in recent years. Nintendo had tried it with Punch-Out !! for Wii and Ubisoft with Fighter Within for Kinect, unfortunately, especially in the second case, the technology of the motion control it was not mature enough to offer truly satisfying and usable results in a competitive environment. Some series have even disappeared from the radar, just think of the poor Soul Calibur, and only the most famous IPs such as Street Fighter, Tekken and Mortal Kombat survived.
But what if now motion control had finally reached that level of technological advancement sufficient to be able to build a mister fighting game on it? It would happen that a company like Nintendo would put a lot of effort, take what good was done with Punch-Out !! and build a brilliant new title on it. In reality, the conditional is not the most suitable tense on this occasion since the Japanese company has REALLY given birth to a new fighting game based on motion control and its name is ARMS.
What we will do now is to find out if there is indeed genius behind this bizarre and colorful project.
Sprung wrestlers
The first thing that many of you will have noticed upon seeing ARMS images, videos or advertisements is the particular skill of the roster of fighters of stretch your arms as if they were real springs. Behind this small, big detail, the gameplay of the game actually develops which, we can anticipate it right now, is much more complex than it seems. The idea behind ARMS is to offer the user a game in which it is possible to independently control both the arms of the character at the ends of which are however applied special weapons of different types. The fighter then has the ability to parry the opponent's blows, take jumps and dodge, as well as activate thelatent attribute of your gloves by charging the shot with a long press of the X or Y buttons.
Finally, the view is close-up and placed behind the character to allow maximum maneuverability, the shots fired can be given specific trajectories to take the opponent by surprise and jumps and shots also give way to move quickly within the battlefield. . To this must be added the combo attack and grapple: here are all the possible actions that the player has available during a regular match. No super-moves activated by key combinations and consumable items: ARMS's password is “essentiality”, and honestly it couldn't have been a better choice.
"I have fists in my hands!"
However, each character has peculiar abilities that make him unique within the roster: Ninjara teleports when he saves a shot, Kid kobra increases his dodge speed when shots are loaded while Min Min has a kick at his disposal that can repel attacks; However, if you want to build the perfect attack strategy, you must also carefully choose the ones weapons-glove that best suit the situation and your fighting style.
There are lots of them to unlock and they range from heavy and purely offensive ones to others more aimed at a defensive approach. Each then has a weight and an attribute, the weights are 3 that is light, medium and heavy, while the attributes are 7 and are divided into fire, electricity, wind, ice, stun, blast and blindness. The role of weight within the dynamics of ARMS is related to the possibility or not of repelling the opponent's blows with an attack: the following scheme is “light <medium <heavy”, while the speed is distributed in an exactly inverse way. The attributes, on the other hand, are activated, as already mentioned, with the prolonged pressure of the X or Y keys and give the shot a specific effect such as slowing down (ice) or repulsion (wind). Finally, during the matches there will be some elements that will interfere with the fighters such as the bombs or supporting objects: nothing too invasive or able to radically change the fate of the game, however.
Playing randomly and without a specific assault plan, however, is not very useful: the simplicity of the control system must absolutely not deceive you since, to bring home a victory, quick reflexes, knowledge of the functioning of one's weapons are essential. and a certain synchrony in the management of the two arms. ARMS is, in short, a dynamic and fast game that nevertheless does not disdain a bit of tactics in the choice and management of weapons. This is true whether you are using i classic controls and based solely on buttons and sticks, whether you rely on motion sensors and gyroscopes: Nintendo has studied and perfected both input systems down to the smallest detail to make the experience fluid, enjoyable and responsive whatever your choice.
All tastes plus one
Without listing them all, the range of game modes that you will find in ARMS puts on the table a really good offer and this applies to both singleplayer that for the multiplayer. Of course, we are not faced with a colossus of the caliber of Super Smash Bros., despite this Nintendo has still set up a variegated and highly customizable structure, which manages to remain qualitatively attractive even in the minigames. The online component, however, is the one that surprises most of all because, through a simple but intelligent management of the lobbies, it also manages to offer a long series of meetings in an extremely fast way and with zero stress for the user. If the stability of the connection will then be the same as that found during the four days of open beta, we can really sleep peacefully as regards the online.
Maniacs of perfectionism
Last, but not least, the visual sector. Nintendo is used to doing maniacally perfect jobs with its titles and ARMS can be considered living proof of this. The style adopted for the game is colorful, clean and simple but at the same time recognizable at a glance: the designers have in fact endowed all or almost the characters with a strong personality to the point that as soon as they were unveiled, they went viral in a few days just like with Splatoon. From the point of view of performance, however, the game behaves flawlessly both in mode portatile that hooked to the TV, the definition of the textures and the cleanliness of the image are then an excellent contour to a fighting game that in itself is really engaging.
And the music?!?! We want to talk about the music?!?! Captivating pop motifs, which get into your head and you find yourself humming in the shower or in line at the post office: when the composers of a video game manage to do this, it means that they have done their job very well.
When ARMS was announced there was more than a few doubts about its actual goodness, especially because it involved the use of motion control. Joy-Con in hand, however, the experience that this fighting game is able to offer to the user is something extremely pleasant and engaging: not only are fist fights fun and accessible to all, but thanks to its particular structure it can be suitable even in more competitive contexts than the classic living room at home. It was thought to be just a filler to calm the spirits waiting for big names like Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade 2, but ARMS instead is here to stay and becomes in fact one of the killer applications of the newborn Nintendo Switch. Our curiosity now goes to post launch support: what will the development team have in store with the free DLCs planned for the next few months? Time will tell!
► ARMS is a fighting game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 16/06/2017
