Topic: ARMS

Many thanks for that. I've sent the guy a friend request.

After a not so much exciting first Testpunch, my hype got me fall in love in the second one, where i got better overall with controls and got better into mechanics. Game is deep on a gameplay basis, it doesn't matter if it is not so much complicated: you can't just do button smash. And the most important thing: strategy. Learn when to jump, dash, jump & dash, block, charge punches, curve punches and grab. As i said on my Twitter this can be a new frontier for fighting games. And as i said time ago this is a huge sleeper for the Switch!

Once I switched to Master Mummy I started to win almost every time. It's not a subtle, technical play style so probably wouldn't work online once people really get the hang of the game. It's still really encouraging that I have a chance, I usually avoid online Fighters because it's no fun when you can't get a look in.

The demo convinced me to pre order last night. I loved the art style and music, but the gameplay was really fun and approachable and worked great in handheld mode. The game still feels a bit bare, but I'm excited that it will be regularly updated (for free), not a model I've experienced before.

@JoeDiddley It's not exactly the same since you choose what content you actually want t download, but Monster Hunter, at least from 3U onwards has provided free(-ish, involving quests to acquire advertised gear) content regularly.

I just spiked the ball with a charged slapamader and scored off of a serve 5 times against another Ribbon Girl in a mirror match of V-ball, then played that player in a match and got a perfect against them. Ribbon Girl said "I win!" as her victory line and the other player quit the lobby.

V-Ball is a cheesy garbage mode, but that was some serious mind games from just my spamming and olaying aggressively. The pro controller is waaaay better, at least in the demo environment.

Yep I'm sold. And I am totally rocking MinMin as my main.

I... don't know. My opinion of the game has improved dramatically since I transitioned away from the godawful motion controls in the first testpunch, but it still doesn't feel like there's a whole lot there. Maybe there doesn't need to be. Maybe just playing online every now and then will be fine.

If there's a strict ranking system for Grand Prix like in MK8, that'll help a lot.

As it stands, I'm enjoying playing the game with traditional controls (although it bugs me that the game appears to get confused if I want to play with button controls on split joycons; also, having to click in the left analog stick to block is stupid). If I do get it, Ninjara will be my main for sure.

@Ralizah I don't think the motion controls are god awful, but I like the pro controller a lot more. However, I'll be using the motion controls more when I get it. This game will make a good little workout for me.

Finished Testpunch and loving motion controls. Good response, precise and really a lot of fun. Tested again Ninjara & Helix, this time Master Mummy too. Went bad with all of them but i would love to try Helix with different weapons. Then i returned to my man: Spring Man, and i won really a lot. Meanwhile i wait to test Kid Cobra, i will surely use him. His powers are really strong. The ability to have always charged arms at the end of a fight is REALLY strong. Won a lot using it!!

I'm slowly getting the hang of Helix's movements, doing a lot better when I ditched the lousy Guardian arm (it's way too easy to work around for the opponent, prevents you from charging while it's out and it's pretty much useless in any alternate mode. Whenever I see a Helix in the attract mode using one or two of them, they usually fail miserably).

@meleebrawler Yeah, I feared the guardian when I first came across it but once I figured out what it was all about, it was a piece of cake avoiding it.

3rd test punch, 3rd score of 92!! Madness! In fairness, I only played 45 mins of this one. A lot of fun was had. Noticed people are upping their guard game this time round!

@meleebrawler yeah i meant also that when i said i would like to try him with different arms. Even the blob one is not that great...his movements are fantastic and i'm looking forward to play him in the game. But again: with different arms

Are you people having success with the motion controls standing up or just trying to apologize for a bad demo environment? Both Splatoon 2 and this beta have been absolutely savage: in the first one getting murdered by the super fans of the first game, and in this one getting murdered in several different modes by people using controllers while trying to learn the motion inputs.

I still think team mode is trash because of that rope tying you both super close together despite the lack of voice chat to coordinate movement like some sort of semi-functional voice chat, the fact that friendly fire is enabled, and the sheer volume of lashing projectiles going on at any given moment. 4 player mode is at least functional and a little fun, but 1 on 1 is definitely the best and only mode I will want to play.

@Haru17 i played only with motion controls and yeah, i got some success (yesterday i got a sort of achievement with bonus points for 20 W in a row). But consider i love them and i'm loving them from Splatoon on Wii U. With time i'm getting better experience from them. It's too much precise in confront to sticks.

About team mode i think voice chat is mandatory. The rumble modes (both 3 and 4 people) are pure chaos and fun for that, but 90% is mind games there. And yeah 1v1 is obviously the best (but not v-ball )

For some reason, I do way better with the motion controls than the Pro controller. Movement is definitely easier with the Pro, but I must be doing something wrong with the punches, because they feel much more imprecise than they do with the motion controls.

@Ralizah Well, this is just a demo. The full game will probably have much more content.

I wasn't sure what I'd think of the motion controls in ARMS, but I've been surprised by the by what I've found. In my head there are two camps of motion; the Mario Kart camp and the Splatoon camp.

In the former, they don't really do anything that a basic setup doesn't, and are really only there to offer an 'experience' to people who want to pretend they're actually driving a Go-Kart around (think all those adverts with photogenic 'casual gamers' clutching wheels in the Mario Kart Wii era). In short, they're a gimmick. A harmless, and potentially fun and quirky gimmick, but still a gimmick.

In the Splatoon's case, they actually offer a quantifiable advantage over the standard thumb-stick alone, in giving the player near-instant access to a huge aiming range - comparable to immediacy and scope of a gaming mouse. The funny thing was seeing some of the self-proclaimed 'hardcore' feeling immediately offended by the fact they weren't instantly l33t with the new interface, and throwing around a bunch of dismissive proclamations along the lines of: "Splatoon's motion are literally cancerous garbage for trash noobs and cancerous toddlers". That the kind of reception that was pretty common around the game's launch, then as time went on and it became clear that most of the best players were using them, the statements became less common and the realisation dawned on initially dismissive crowd that they had become the noobs they had once despised. Many of whom probably reacted by labelling the entire game as "cancerous garbage for trash noobs", because accepting reality is harder than just calling it "cancer" and cashing in your Edge Points at the Bank of Knee-Jerk Hyperbole. But hey.

Anyway, I was wary of ARMS because I thought it was either going to be unresponsive and imprecise (Wii Sports Boxing isn't exactly a shining example of grace and precision), and even if not, it was still going to get tiring and/or irritating flailing controllers around for extended periods of time.

Having spend some time with them, I don't find either to be the case. At the Switch test event, I didn't get on with them. I flailed around a bit, but mainly just got beaten up and felt utterly divorced from what was happening on screen. However, having spent a decent bit of time with them, I've actually them out, and whenever I've used it the Pro Controller or played the game in handheld mode, I've soon wanted to slot the Joy-Cons out of the console and start punching again. I haven't kept a Win/Loss ratio with both control schemes, but I'm winning the vast majority with the actual punching setup. Which brings me to my second point about exhaustion. I've heard some people say they've worked up playing the game, which means either I'm super fit or I'm super lazy, because I've just been plonked down in my armchair (AKA the ARMSchair), giving the controllers simple flicks and not working up a bead more sweat than I do in any other game.

I don't feel confident claiming them to be the inherently superior option (a la Splatoon), but I don't really think they're just a casual-orientated gimmick like Mario Kart. So who knows. The most important thing is that people find some way of playing that suits them.

@Haru17 I, for one, like the motion controls best, and I've only lost a handful of games, so yeah, I'm having some success.

In this Testpunch session I tried to use different control schemes than the standard "thumbs-up" position. Playing in handheld mode was quite fun, and the controls were fine, if a little unintuitive, but I hated using the Joy-Con Grip and I really don't know why. It just doesn't feel right to me, so I think I'll stick to motion controls.

The modes are a mixed bag. The 1 v. 1 and 2 v. 2 is great, but the free for all 3 player and 4 player modes are not as good, if not downright bad, and I just hate V-Ball. It should just be a minigame you play in the lobby, not a full mode.

This game is something special. It's not Splatoon, that's for sure. Splatoon was something amazing, and I will never get tired of it, whereas I can see myself getting bored of ARMS. I do love what I've seen though, the characters, the controls, the gameplay, etc is highly polished and fun. I look forward to getting the game in June.