Nick Adams Games Blog

The Xbox Live Arcade is home to all sorts of games like puzzlers, shmups, retro games and the like but its not everyday a 4 player fighting game is released. Enter Small Arms. This is a game best described as a mixture of elements from Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros and Konami’s Contra games.

Fighting games are hardly renowned for their plots, and the developers understand this enough to fashion a tongue in cheek story involving time travel, mutant animals and an evil scientist (called Dr.Soandso). What this boils down to is a roster of cute animals each with their own signature weapon who will happily fight each other to the death. There’s a pig with a sniper rifle, a chicken with a flamethrower and a teddy bear with a minigun for an arm amongst others.

Up to 4 players can play at the same time as you frantically jump, shoot and melee round a variety of 2D arenas. Standard player moves include a double jump and the ability to shoot at any angle from anywhere you are on the screen (sort of like Geometry Wars). The controls are very simple and so are the rules: shoot everyone and try not to get shot too much yourself. There are health and weapon pickups that randomly appear around the level which reward players who are jumping around.

For a small Live Arcade game, the visuals are very well done, and the cute cartoon-like look to the animals are quite reminiscent of Rare’s N64 games like Banjo Kazooie or Conkers Bad Fur Day. The environments are also fully in 3D with lots of pretty lighting effects and textures.

Sadly, although this game looks the part and has lots of character, it can’t disguise the fact that its fundamentally flawed. The reason why its so flawed is because it falls inbetween 2 established genres and fails miserably at both of them. Its not quite a versus fighting game in the true sense as its lacking the ability to guard attacks or throw your opponent. Its also not a true versus shooting game as all of those use the third dimension to dodge bullets.

What you’re left with is a game devoid of any real skill; where its impossible to attack someone without taking damage yourself. With such terrible foundations as these, adding frantic multiplayer modes only complicate things and make the game more frustrating.

For me the most frustrating thing is that I really wanted to like this game. For an Xbox Live arcade game its well presented, has lots of character and some interesting ideas (such as introducing the first viral achievement on Xbox Live). Its just a nightmare to play after a few minutes when you find yourself searching for some gameplay.

5/10