Nintendo just dropped their latest Direct, which focused heavily on their latest upcoming Nintendo Switch fighting game, ARMS.
The direct opened with Biff, the games announcer giving some light exposition for the game, followed by the introduction of weights and attributes, weight referring to the three available weight classes available for every kind of Arm, which were light, medium and heavy classes. Attributes referred to the types of elements that each Individual Arm can posses, which were fire electricity, wind, ice, stun, explosive, and blind. Different arms have different attributes; each individual arm can be equipped with different combos of attributes. Existing characters were mentioned, but new and unique weapons for some of the fighters were also highlighted, amongst them there were chakrams, something called the Retorcher a fire based weapon, and another known as a Popper, a weapon that mimics crackers or party poppers popular during holidays. Some of the more unique weapons are known as signature weapons that certain characters have available to them from the get-go.
Several new characters were also introduced into the fray, the first being, Kid Cobra, who is a more “hip” fighter with a charging dash. Byte and Bark, two new characters introduced act as one fighter, similar to the ice climbers from Smash Brothers. The character seems to be based on a Police officer and his dog. Finally, to round out the new characters, Twintelle was shown off for the first time, a glamorous movie actress inspired female fighter, with her hair actually being her Arms or weapons rather than her physical arms.
A verses mode was also showed off, starting with Fight mode, a basic one on one arena battle mode, bombs and healing items were shown to occasionally drop in during the fight to add tension, Team Fight was also showed off which features two on two battles, with team members actually being tied together making things much more challenging. Several other modes were shown off which include V-Ball, the mode looked reminiscent of beach volleyball, Hoops a game loosely based around basketball, Skill shot mode which lets player test their accuracy while trying to take out targets, 1 On 100, which pits the player against an onslaught of enemies, and finally Arms Test and Training mode which allow players to go through various challenges in order to better understand the game, with Arms Test mode focusing on giving the player a random assortment of various Arms to play around with.
Prize money can be earned through playing that lets players unlock new Arms, duplicate Arms can sometimes be received, however occasionally duplicate Arms can actually have better stats than the original Arm. Battle Mode was the next mode highlighted in the direct, starting with Grand prix, which will allow up to two players to play through the games single player mode, tournament mode was also shown off which highlighted the games ability to create tournaments that can be played both offline and online with a local friend or solo. Finally, Ranked match was shown which is meant to satisfy people who want to challenge themselves.
Local wireless mode was also highlighted that will allow up to eight Switches to connect to play together. The directed also mentioned the inclusion of free DLC to hit the game shortly after launch. Fans rearing to play Arms can look forward to several betas will be available for the game, similar in fashion to the Splatoon 2 test fire that recently took place, known as the Global Test punch. The dates for the Global Test punch are as followed: May 26, 2017 to May 28, 2017 and June 2, 2017 until June 4, 2017, more information is available on Nintendo’s official site.
Finally, the end of the direct showed off a new surprise trailer for Splatoon 2 that highlighted some of the story elements fans should expect in the upcoming sequel set to hit store shelves and the Nintendo E-Shop later this year.
