More Thoughts From Me #83: Testing Out ARMS

When Nintendo first showed ARMS off, I thought it looked awful. Then I saw some more footage and I thought, well, it might be ok. But the more footage I saw of it, the less I liked how it looked. ARMS was boring me. I was pretty sure I’d never play it. However, I got a Nintendo Switch recently and Nintendo decided to bring the ARMS Testpunch (demo) back last weekend. I decided to check the game out. Does my opinion of ARMS still hold? Let’s find out!

I didn’t think I’d like ARMS. But I thought, well, why not try it out anyway?

I knew that the main way to play ARMS was via the Joy-con controllers motion controls. So thats the way I decided to play the game. Boy am I glad I did.

Using both the right and left Joy-cons, it is very easy to punch your enemy in the game. The joy-cons are super responsive, so you only have to do a tiny movement to punch. I still found myself over exageratting my punches. I was just having too much fun.

In ARMS, you don’t just punch your enemy. You can pick them up and throw them. You have special powers that make you punch faster or send objects flying at your enemy. Moving around in the game is a little awkard via motion controls, but mostly you’re having too much fun to notice that.

I’m not a huge fighting game fan. I’m not a huge motion controls fan. But with ARMS, the fighting is fun. The motion controls are really impressive with the Joy-cons. I would say that ARMS is the best motion controlled game that I’ve ever played. The motion controls on the Wii were good but Nintendo really improved them a lot with ARMS.

I did play a match of ARMS in handheld mode without the motion controls. I thought the game was fine there but it didn’t seem as exciting or as fun as it did with the motion controls. ARMS is definitly more of a TV game with motion controls rather than a handheld game. I highly recommend playing it via the TV.

ARMS is a ton of fun. The characters and levels presented are all really cool. My favorite character, so far, is Master Mummy. Though the Ninja guy is cool too. Fighting online was super easy and (mostly) it didn’t take long to get a match. I had only one instance where I was cut off at the end of a match. Otherwise, the Testpunch worked well. As I said earlier, I wasn’t expecting to like this game so much.

The footage for this game does not do it justice. ARMS is the type of game that you have to actually play (or at least it was for me) before you believe how good it is.The same thing happened with me and the first Splatoon. I wasn’t conviced of that game either and then I played the Splatoon Testfire. And I was hooked. Well, now I’m hooked on ARMS!

Thankfully our editor-in-Chief, Adam Roffel, is sending me his copy of ARMS soon. I can’t wait to play this game more.

What do you think of ARMS? Did you play the testpunch? Are you hooked on ARMS too? Let us know!

Next week: Steamworld Dig 2! My thoughts on what I’ve seen of the game so far. How excited am I for this game?!

More Thoughts From Me is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed here are mine and mine alone. Wish I could play ARMS now. I really feel like punching something. lol