So, I broke down and did it. I purchased my 2nd live arcade game. Yes, my second, as I’d only paid points for uno before this one, and that was just because it was cheaper than buying a deck of cards locally. I don’t usually buy many microsoft points because I’m not a fan of how any of it has been handled yet, as far as bang for the buck, and I really don’t like how you can’t just buy the points you need. I’ve amassed my points from a few places… I got 1600 points from the 360 achiever promotion with true.com, 500 points from a verizon contest that was really a failure in my opinion, and another 1600 point card from bonus credit card points.
Today though, I picked up Small Arms. It was 800 points, or 10 dollars. Overall I really like the game. I hear it is like a Nintendo game called Super Smash Brothers, but I’ve never played it, as I’m not really a big Nintendo fan. Never really have been. I was always that guy with the Sega systems growing up… The master system, the genesis, the sega cd, the game gear, the dreamcast. Oh well. Anyway, the game is like a little fighting game, where you choose (initially) one of 8 characters (of 12 total, 4 are locked) and go to battle on one of 8 levels. Your characters vary from fluffy animals to a mutant tree, to a robot. I don’t care so much about their stories as much as how they looked, and the character models were pretty impressive considering the size of the game (about 47 megs). You can ”battle” with up to 3 other players or ai players and to shoot each other till the death until the end of the match. Pretty simple, so just about anyone can pick it up pretty easily.
Each character has a different weapon, and a different subweapon, though during the match you are able to pick up other weapons as you go. I found myself using the cat guy the most because he is the first character on the list, and I was on my lunch break. Some of the levels are pretty cool, like the tornado and train levels, as the level itself scrolls past you, and you must continue hopping and moving and shooting so as not to fall off the screen.
My only 2 complaints with the game would have to be the controls and the camera. The camera isn’t really a big deal, it’s just that it zooms in and out very randomly it seems, and makes it hard to see what is going on sometimes with all the action and small characters. The controls however, is a tough nut to crack. There are 3 possible jump buttons, the a button, or the left or right bumper buttons above the triggers. Now, to fire your weapon, you must use the right trigger to fire, or left trigger for secondary weapon, and at the same time use the right thumbstick to aim. It gets really hairy when you have to actually jump aim, and shoot all at the same time. As you probably can figure out, it’s pretty damn hard to press the a button while you are moving the right thumbstick. The solution would seem to be to use the right and left bumpers but for some reason I couldn’t get used to it… I don’t often hit both bumpers at the same time, and crossing over just felt weird. Instead I found myself sacrificing the ability to jump and aim at the same time a LOT.
If you can get past these small issues (or if they aren’t issues to you), the game is a must buy in my opinion. The price is decent for the replayability on it, and as I said in my title, it’s not old crap, its a new game (though it could be argued a copy of an older game) but the graphics look great, and it’s a lot of fun to play both offline and online. I usually don’t advocate purchasing arcade games, but if Microsoft can continue to get developers making these kinda games, more people such as myself will come around.
I’ll leave everyone with this last thought however, I played a demo on the pc of that game “Heavy Weapon” and my God, that is the most boring crap I think I have ever wasted 60 seconds on. Don’t believe me? Give it a try. For the life of me, I just couldn’t get into the basic, repetitive sprites coming in wave after wave. I’ve played this game before, a million times in the 80’s and 90’s and it looked MUCH better and played MUCH better then. Arcade doesn’t have to mean lame and crappy, so why push out a game like that?
