It's Super Smash Brothers meets Mexican Wrestling chickens.
Small Arms is an un-ashamed rip-off Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers series. It pits four quirky characters against each other in arenas of all different varieties. What Small Arms lacks in originally, it makes up for in character and just plain fun game play.
GAME PLAY
What first attracted me to Small Arms was it’s unique characters. All of the characters are original, and very funny (like a Mexican wrestling chicken, or an Assassin Pig). Each character has their own unique weapon, with it’s own strengths and weaknesses. You can perform melee attacks, or special weapon attacks with ease. My only real complaint about the game play is that the camera sometimes will zoom in too much, and characters will be shown off-screen with a little icon. This makes it difficult to time jumps or shots.
The levels, while style-wise aren’t very exciting; do provide a great deal of variety and challenges. The game can be played in both single player offline, and online via Xbox Live or LAN. The single player game is little more than training for the online game, but is fun in it’s own right.
GRAPHICS
Although the characters are designed well, the graphic quality is a little sub-par for the 360. They still look good, but don’t have that high quality that we’re used to seeing on next-gen systems. But the frame rate stays true even with the camera zoomed in with all four characters on screen.
SOUND
All the weapons and other sound effects are great, and add to the style of the game. The only problem here is the music. There isn’t much, and it’s forgettable when you do notice it. With character styles as unique as this, it would have been nice to have more voice-overs too.
VALUE
The lasting value in Small Arms is the online play. It’s fun and fast-paced despite it not being the most original idea. You can easily spend hours fighting it out online, and with the possibility of new characters being added in the future, this is sure to be one of the most popular games on the Arcade.
The achievements are well balanced between being easy and more challenging to unlock. There’s even an achievement for playing online with one of the devs. My only gripe is that there isn’t much in the way of unlockable content.
Overall, Small Arms is a fun addition to XBL Arcade, if not a very original game. It’s sure to be one of the most popular games on the Arcade, and with some additional content stands to stick around for a long time.