At the core of the Live Arcade is a digital heart that's pumping with gaming passion. It beats in time to the music from Geometry Wars while the left and right valves swoosh open with SFX from Mutant Storm Reloaded. Originality is the life blood of the Arcade, it keeps it healthy. However some publishers are like those feeders you see on channel Five documentaries. They seem obsessed with stuffing retro crap down the Arcade's throat until it's an ugly beast that no one finds attractive. Thankfully Small Arms is here to give it a burst of adrenaline to keep that heart healthy.
For anyone that has played games like Powerstone or Super Smash Bros. Melee, the concept of Small Arms should be fairly easy to grasp. Basically you chuck four fighters into an arena and then let them duke it out. If you take too much of a beating you die and if you fall off the edge of the 2D stage, you die as well. The simple way to stop dying is to kill everyone else... and that's what Small Arms lets you do very well.
Each character (we'll get onto those in a moment) has a different sort of gun. You aim the weapon with the right analogue stick, shoot with the trigger and move about with the left analogue. The controls are quite tricky to master, particularly when the stage is full of three other combatants trying to slice and dice you. But they're not impossible to conquer and after several goes you start to slide into them quite nicely.
The weapons available are a nice mix. The characters have their own signature weapon they start with on each level. There's a mutant chicken that uses a flamethrower whereas a pig assassin favours a sniper rifle. Each gun has a primary fire (normally something quick) and a secondary fire that's more powerful (like a grenade). However your ammo isn't unlimited and if you're too trigger happy your battery will die, meaning you have to find another one in the stage. The battery element adds to the fun because there's nothing worse than your battery failing halfway through an intense shootout with a mutant chicken.
During each match weapons will randomly appear somewhere within the arena and you can pick them up. This is also handy when your gun's just run out of juice. So although your character may have access to every single weapon, they could appear at any time and you can't rely on getting the laser sword when you're in the thick of the fight. It may sound like there's no point in choosing your character carefully because you can grab all the pummelling utilities during fights, however some of the starting weapons are crap and getting lumbered with the pig's slow firing sniper rifle is a nightmare. So you will quickly develop your favourite that's not based purely on the crazy/original aesthetics.
Clearly the best thing to do with all these powerful weapons is to take them on Live. Although the single player is really only a quest for Achievements, as soon as three other humans join you for a match this evolves into a totally different beast. Whether you're playing on one console or over Live, the action is constantly frenetic and action-packed. There's no slowdown and the cries of dismay as you knock someone off the edge are too glorious not to enjoy. And it seems like it's been a long time since we've enjoyed anything new on Arcade.
If there's anything wrong with Small Arms it's that there just isn't enough to satisfy our needs. We would have loved more levels, more to do in single player and even more characters. But that's really a sign of what a neat little Arcade title this is. Some matches will leave you breathless and your eyes will still be trying to keep up with the action on screen when you've stopped playing. It may not have the depth of its inspiration Super Smash Bros. but it's still the sort of game we NEED to see more of on Arcade.
