ARMS (ง’̀-‘́)-------------ง

Bought this over the weekend after falling in love with the Global Testpunch. I agree with everything Dave said above, particularly how solid it feels. I liken it to Splatoon in that it’s got that flair, energy and identity right out of the gates. Looking forward to playing some more soon, particularly against friends.

It’s an awesome game and an amazing exercise in creating a new property in my opinion. The core conceit of punch, block throw is familiar but the world and the dynamic gameplay is something all new and fun. The music stands out too. It immediately sets the tone for exciting play.

Nintendo has clearly been busy preparing for the release of the Switch for quite awhile.

It’s discounted to about $40 on the eShop this week, so now’s your chance! I picked it up and have enjoyed my first couple hours with it.

I guess we should’ve rezzed the thread before the weekend, but there was a Global Test Punch for this over the last weekend.

The Global Test Punch is kind of weird. They’ve done it before, so I assume it’s always the same format, but you basically play a very quick controls tutorial, and then it drops you into a “party mode”, where you are in a lobby with about 10 other people, and it drops you into one of about 5 different match types with other people in that lobby randomly. Options are things like:

  • 1 v 1
  • 2 v 2
  • 3 v an AI boss character
  • 2 v 2 in a target practice style arena where you play for points
  • 1v1 with a weird basketball theming where you basically get points for knock-downs

It definitely doesn’t do enough to explain the mechanics. The basic controls are demonstrated, but a bunch of stuff (like the “charge” mechanics) is mentioned but not explained.

I guess motion controls are the “intended” experience, but I found the actual button controls to be really hard to grok. Jump, dodge, and attack are on totally wrong buttons compared to most action games, but it still kind of feels like a character-action game, so I wanted the controls to be like, Bayonetta-y. Also, block is L3 (i.e. click the analog stick), which is never the right answer to any control scheme.

I can see it having depth as a fighting game…but I have a lot of issues getting used to the controls, so I doubt I’ll be picking it up. It just isn’t quite intuitive enough to be a mess-around multiplayer experience (and I definitely don’t have the time to put into it to actually play seriously).

You really should have tried the motion controls before the Test Punch ended. They’re excellent and work perfectly. I think the gamepad ones are configurable, but don’t quote me on that.

Both are viable in competitive play.

Here’s the 2018 Online Championship from this past weekend (which was the reason for the Test Punch).

I highly recommend watching some of the above. The final match was RIDICULOUS! I won’t even say why. Just watch.

Motion controls in ARMS are freaking awesome and so much fun!

That’s the only way my son and I play, even if they are less precise than other methods.

I tried the thumbs-up grip briefly, but I couldn’t really get the handle on them either.

I will say that I think there is at least 1 thing that definitely feels better about the motion controls than the buttons. With the controller, you use the analog stick to move around, but when punching, you use the analog stick to curve your punch. If you want to move left, but then curl a punch right, you have to snap the stick back and forth pretty accurately.

With motion controls, you tilt both controllers to move around (Virtual-On style), but to curve your punch, you rotate your wrist in or out. Because these are totally distinct motions, it seems like it would be easier to separate the two.

Yeah, I played with both quite a bit and eventually settled on the motion controls because it just felt natural. It’s like shadow boxing, but the control you have is so precise that you really feel like you’re using those on screen arms. I think the full 3D movement really adds something special too as moving in the vertical plane along with the horizontal one is vital to success.

It’s a brilliantly designed core concept IMO. It’s a fighting game in true 3D in a way no other game has been done before it including Virtual On. which is probably its closest analog. It’s got a little bit of Heavy Metal: Geomatrix to it as well which no one but me has probably played here on Qt3.

I don’t know why, but my brain can suddenly see the thread title for what it is. It’s an old woman, not a young lady!

image

LOL. I was going to say that I played this, on account of it being the Dreamcast and being able to…“acquire” pretty much any game from the internet…but I think I might have played Heavy Metal FAKK, and the Spawn game instead, which looks somewhat similar. (3rd person arena-type PvP…we were discussing Anarchy Reigns in another thread, and I couldn’t help but think about that a little bit as well!)

There’s clearly a lot of complexity here, which I’m pretty sure that I would never scratch the surface of…but it’s definitely pretty cool.

Ha! I own it legitimately as I have a pretty extensive collection of Dreamcast games (and still add to it now and then), and I did play HM:G a lot. I really liked the design and I’m a metal guy so the music was great too.

Other than VO though, I don’t think anything was as good as ARMS at making it feel so seamless and controllable. I totally know it’s my fault when I lose in ARMS which is always the sign of a great fighter IMO. You can easily see your mistakes and how a counter or dodge or attack at that moment was possible to defend or attack for the win. I also really like the diverse lineup of characters that hew to a single standard but with enough variation to find one that suits your style best. Throw in all the variation of the arms available to each on top of that, and yeah, it’s really deep.

It’s really fun to watch competitively.

@Rock8man I guess you’re being silly, but it’s a dude with an extended arm punching…