Arms, Endless Space 2, Nex Machina, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and more games reviewed!
THE TECHLIFE TEAM REVIEWS THE LATEST GAMES FOR PC AND CONSOLES, BEGINNING WITH A NINTENDO EXCLUSIVE WITH... REACH.
Arms ITS GREATEST TRICK IS ALSO LIKELY ITS MOST DIVISIVE ELEMENT. $79.95 | Switch | arms.nintendo.com
AS YOU’D EXPECT from the name, being able to throw a proper punch is the most important thing in Arms. However, simply getting an enemy into a punchable position frequently feels like the hardest thing. But you’ll often want to miss on purpose, sending out a limb to block off an escape route. If an opponent sends one out to your right, you’re going to go left; a canny foe, knowing this, will send a follow-up punch in the direction to which they’ve just tricked you into heading. Being hit in the face is bad enough; knowing that you walked straight into it is even worse.
Especially if the fist in question had been charged up. While the methods of doing so are largely universal across the cast — blocking for a while, holding the jump button until you touch the ground again, or likewise with a dash — some characters get a new ability when their arms are charged, and every fist type takes on a new property. Some get bigger; others faster. They might stun an opponent with electricity, knock them to the ground with fire, or lock them in place with ice.
None of that matters unless you get your arm selection right. Each of the 10 characters will have, once unlocked, a pool of 30 fists to choose from, and can take a loadout of just three into battle. Some fly straight, some in a curve and others randomly, while some have homing properties. Some emit bursts of laser fire, one bounces along the ground, and if it hits your opponent, will explode and leave an inky mess on their screen. Ensuring you take a good loadout is the true key to success.
Each stage is different, often involving moving or changing elements during a fight, which means you need to adapt your playstyle.
The camera is positioned tight behind your fighter, and curving arms are hard to track. And while you’ll want to keep moving to make life as difficult as possible, you’ll occasionally be boxed in with no escape route, and will need to put up your guard, bringing the two Joy-Cons together in front of your chest.
By stripping away the fiddle and the faff of so many fighting games, Nintendo has crafted a level playing field for combatants of all skill levels. Even fights between relative novices can have the back-and-forth flow of a highlevel match.
With such magic at the game’s core, it’s a little easier to excuse its flaws. Perhaps most troubling of all is that, it can sometimes feel as if the motion controls are letting you down. Occasionally, there can be too much of a gap between intention and execution, and that simply evaporates when using traditional controls.
But even so, this is a great game — another standard bearer for Nintendo’s new console.