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A Few Hours with Arms First Test Punch

Nintendo is continuing the success of their early “beta” version in which players can participate, in a certain timeframe, an early version of the game to stress test the game’s servers. The first stress test Nintendo release on the Nintendo Switch was the Splatoon 2 “Test Fire” earlier in March, and this past weekend they opened the public on to the Arms” Test Punch”.

Because of the times the Test Punch was available it was difficult to find time to dedicate time too. But I did take some time to play a full two-hours, and man I have some thoughts.


When the second available time was open on Saturday I gave Arms a good try, and overall it surprised me how deep the mechanics can go. Each character has a different feel, want to be big and hit heavy? You have that, or small but nimble? That’s here also. But that’s only one part of preparation, when picking your fighter, you must also pick their “Arms”, now choose carefully because this can be the difference from a loss to a win. The Arms are also unique to each character giving traits like lightning, boomerang, dragon fist, and heavy, providing the players with that extra tactical layer.

These characters are different enough to master each. During the test punch, I played Ninjara and Spring Man, each felt different. With Ninjara, a dodge and block is a short-teleport and with Spring Man it’s just a dodge. This might not seem like much of a change, but it makes a difference.

The motions controls are wonky and don’t react fast enough for me to feel that impact in a punch, but I did play in handheld mode with the joystick and I prefer the motion controls. I didn’t get to play much with the joysticks, but I’m sure part of my preference is due to time with the motion controls. Motion controls add this extra fun factor, moving your arms and that translating in a game, while isn’t new it’s still fun.

Playing on a controller can be great for other players, it gives the player more precise movements which is essential for this game. What I don’t like are the control mapping, as someone that plays many games, Arms doesn’t use dual stick controls. Instead you use the left stick to move, the X and Y buttons to punch, and L and R bumpers to dash left or right. This layout is confusing when so many games uses dual-joystick as camera control.


The game itself had a couple of modes that were randomized. Before going into a match, you are put in a pool and that pool of players are randomized into separate game matches. For example, it might group two-players into a 1v1 fighting match at the same time another four players are playing volleyball in a different match, after completing the matches those players are again randomized into random modes.

I love the 1v1 and volleyball modes that Nintendo allow us to see, I don’t like the fighting matches that have more than two players, its frantic and messy in a way a fighting game shouldn’t be. When there are more than two players during a fighting match you don’t feel like that tactical layer, it’s more like frantically dodging and flailing your arms and hope it lands on someone. When this occurs, I feel it isn’t the way the game is intended to be played.


Now the volleyball is a cool fun idea, that amazingly works well with the spring mechanics on the arms. So, the rules are don’t let the ball touch the ground or keep the ball on the other side before the ball blows up. The ball exploding is a neat way of keeping the game moving without making the match an actual back and forth rally. What I really like about this mode, is the satisfaction of hitting down a spike. I want more of these kinds of modes in the full release, we already know about the basketball kind of mode on the way.
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This is just the first weekend test punch with the second coming-up this weekend I plan to try out more, and hopefully with more modes. Nintendo is doing great with their new IPs, the fact that we can try out this game before we decide to buy it is something that a lot of other games need.

Arms is intriguing for fighting game fans, because it’s a new take on fighting games with the deep mechanics of the arms and quick dodges, this can be a good fighting game that no one was asking for.

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