Simply put Small Arms is a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. games.
Spend a minute with Small Arms and it will immediately feel familiar, but as you get to know the game you’ll see that it’s more then just a cheap clone. Sadly that’s not such a good thing.
Where eliminations in Smash Bros. relied on you knocking your opponents off screen, in Small Arms you can also die when you run out of health and this proves to be it’s biggest draw back.
Due to the high amount of damage dealt by most weapons and the freakishly small occurrence of health pickups, death comes far too quickly. On top of that, the AI is pretty good at keeping a lock on you so when you’re facing three at once, survival can become next to impossible. It’s a major annoyance but when combined with the game's horribly unbalanced weapons it’s a nightmare.
Some weapons can be a real treat to play with, but other’s a largely useless in unskilled hands. The flamethrower for example is a blast, especially when you start using the alternate fire to lob Molotov Cocktails at the enemy, but sniper rifle on the other hand is frustrating because you have to use the right analog stick to aim.
Thankfully the game allows you to use the bumpers to jump so you can at least keep moving while aiming, but you can’t melee or dash so you’re somewhat restricted.
Weapon damage is also horribly unbalanced as some weapons like the lighting gun dealt massive amounts of damage and are very hard to get away from. Some weapons are so bad that if you start a one-on-three match, with one you may as well just quit.
Mission mode allows you to play through a series of battles with two target practice segments and one boss battle. There’s no real story to speak of so the only real reason to play it is to unlock the game’s four hidden characters and of course to unlock challenge mode which is simply a survival mode.
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