arms
Latest
The next 'Super Smash Bros. Ultimate' fighter is Min Min from 'Arms'
Fallout's Vault Boy is also joining the fray as a Mii Gunner costume.
Nintendo Switch's 'Arms' adds a fighter with robotic scorpion fists
Nintendo seems keen to address Arms' overall thin initial offerings in terms of stages, characters and modes. Since launch the game has been updated a handful of times to add more, and today brings another. Arms 4.0 adds Misango, a man with robotic scorpions for fists. Yes, really. He also has a mask that can help guard against facial damage. There's also a new stage that Misango calls home, and you can see that in the trailer embedded below. Nintendo hasn't updated the fighter overview page online just yet -- or the patch notes -- so it isn't clear what else Misango will bring with him.
British warships will soon have Siri-like voice controls
British warships will soon integrate Siri-like voice systems into their controls, according to the head of the UK's Royal Navy. Speaking at the Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition -- one the biggest arms fairs in the world -- First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Phillip Jones said the Royal Navy wanted to embrace the speed at which warfare is being transformed by IT, and pointed to new Type-31 frigates as an example.
‘Arms’ update adds user-customizable controls
Nintendo announced today on Twitter that the Switch fighting game Arms is getting an update that will probably make a lot of players pretty happy. With version 3, Arms will let users map the controls to the buttons they prefer, which is good since a number of Arms players have found the set configurations to be a bit unintuitive. You can see how the control customization feature will work in the tweet below.
'Arms' update adds a fresh fighter, mode and a new stage
While we're big fans of Nintendo's springy-armed fighter at Engadget, the one criticism we had of the Switch exclusive brawler was that it was a bit lacking in content. Now, with today's game's first major free DLC – it looks like Nintendo is trying to change that. Arms 2.0 is now live, bringing with it a slew of free content including a brand new character, an additional mode, extra arms and even another stage to brawl in. Players may recognize the latest addition to the roster, as the new fighter is one of the hard-hitting bosses from the game's Grand Prix mode -- Max Brass. In addition to being able to fight as him, players will also be able to battle it out on Brass' stage too, Skyloft Arena.
Nintendo bolsters 'Arms' eSports appeal with LAN play
Nintendo's Arms, the rollicking cross between Punch Out and Wii Sports Boxing (with beefed-up motion controls), is receiving another in a long line of promised updates. The most notable addition in version 1.1.0 is LAN play, allowing players to hookup multiple Switch consoles using a wired LAN adapter (that can be purchased separately) for extra stability during multiplayer battles.
‘Arms’ is the successor to ‘Punch Out’ the Nintendo Switch needs
The original Punch Out may be heralded as a classic 8-bit NES game, but it's one I didn't play until I was in college. I'd heard it mentioned as I grew up but always dismissed it out of hand. Sports games, particularly those with celebrity endorsements, meant nothing to me as a child. When I eventually picked up a battered copy at a local flea market, I discovered the game was a masterpiece of simple, but challenging, gameplay. My experience with Arms on the Nintendo Switch is almost identical. It looked underwhelming until, of course, I played it.
Watch us play the Nintendo Switch 'Arms' Global Testpunch
When Nintendo announced Splatoon for the Wii U, gamers weren't quite sure what to make of it. The idea of a competitive shooter from Nintendo was so bizarre, it was kind of hard to assess from a distance -- so the company invited players to try the game early with a free, limited time multiplayer demo. This weekend, Nintendo is doing the same thing with Arms: serving up the game's telescoping pugilism in a free "Global Testpunch" demo over six one hour chunks. Don't have a Switch? You can join us on Facebook for the first session today at 5pm PT (8pm ET).
Nintendo's 'Arms' has all the depth the 'Wii Sports' games lacked
For many, the Switch represents the Nintendo's return to form. It's the console that sheds both the name and the gimmicky motion controls that defined the Wii era of gaming. With traditional games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe leading the way, motion controls seem to be all but a thing of the past. Or they did, until Nintendo announced Arms -- a gesture-based boxing game for the Switch that seems to lean heavily on Wii Sports' legacy. It seems like a bizarre step backward, but don't worry: It turns out that Arms isn't repeating the mistakes of the Wii; it's showing how Nintendo has learned from them.
Nintendo's spring-loaded fighter, 'Arms,' hits Switch in June
Arms -- a fighting game from Nintendo that's essentially a mix of boxing and a shockingly violent Slinky exhibition -- is set to hit the Switch on June 16th. Nintendo revealed the game's release date during a Nintendo Direct live stream today.
Meet the first fighters of Nintendo's newest franchise, 'Arms'
The Switch blew us away when it launched earlier this month, but our enthusiasm for the console's possibilities has been tempered by its seriously limited game library. Lucky for you fighting game fans, brand-new 3D brawler Arms is coming to the console this spring. Nintendo dropped a pair of videos teasing a few characters and mechanics from the upcoming title, which looks about as gleefully competitive and bizarre as you'd expect a first-party Switch game to be.
'Arms' brings shooter-esque boxing to the Nintendo Switch
Nintendo isn't wasting any time with original games for its new Switch console. During its launch live-stream tonight, the company announced Arms, a boxing game that shares a lot with shooters. It relies on motion controls to attack enemies from a distance. In practice, it looks like you're punching with a bit of a delay, thanks to your freakishly long arms (get it?!). In many ways, Arms looks like the successor to Wii Boxing that we've been waiting for. Unfortunately, it won't be ready for the Switch's launch -- you can expect it sometime in spring.
Warlords of Draenor Alpha: Warrior changes
Okay, so we have the alpha patch notes, and they're a doozy. Warriors done got changed, and to my eyes, the changes aren't done - I expect fury to get a pass fairly soon, based on the changes to arms and protection. A lot of abilities were made spec specific or stance specific (the majority of these were protection or defensive stance/gladiator stance abilities) and arms saw an overhaul that completely changes the dynamic of the spec. So what does it all mean? Well, for starters it all means that we're looking at alpha changes, which means by definition that they're not done yet. Panic is verboten. Take them as indicators of where Blizzard's design process is headed, by all means, but don't ever think of them as finalized. Until Blizzard says they're done, they're not done. Looking over the changes, one thing that seems to be happening is that stance switching is being given some emphasis - making Rallying Cry defensive stance only, and then making it an arms/fury ability, means that there's a desire to get warriors back into using the stances. Whether or not this will actually work (I expect it will just force people to write macros again, like we did in the days of Wrath and before) is yet to be seen, but it's clearly on their minds. After the break we'll look at the changes in total as of the most recent alpha patch and discuss their impact on the class.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A Taste for Blood
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Let's just jump right into it, shall we? Ghostcrawler - PTR Class and Set Bonus Issues Warrior - For Arms, we are going to try Overpower proc'ing Sudden Death instead of autoattacks. This will make haste slightly worse (which we can fix) but we hope will help make the rotation slightly more compelling, since autoattack procs can feel really random. With Overpower you can anticipate it a little more. - Likewise, Overpower will cost no rage in Execute range. We agree that saving rage for Overpower and spending it all on Execute don't play well together. - We haven't made a tuning pass on Arms (or any spec) yet. Don't fret about DPS numbers at this stage. source I actually like this change quite a bit. Yes, I am capable of liking things. It's not all whining about haste over here. What I like about it is that it emphasizes Overpower over autoattacks, which are fairly unimportant for an arms warrior anyway. You hit cap at 7.5%, which is absurdly easy in comparison to fury anyway (which is why no fury warrior bothers to try, leaving hit a fairly pointless DPS statistic... but we've talked about hit and expertise before) so you're going to land those slow hits and generate rage with them... and that's pretty much all they should do, in my opinion. With Mortal Strike and Colossus Smash both so important, giving Overpower more to do is fine by me. I also absolutely agree with the idea of making Execute completely discount Overpower's rage cost. In fact, I agree with it so strongly that I'm sort of bemused here. Usually I don't wholeheartedly endorse a proposed change.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: DPS warrior performance and perception
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. If you didn't read Brian Wood's excellent State of DPS in Mists of Pandaria post yet this week, you should before we go any further, because I'm going to be discussing it as well as GuildOx's study of the most popular raiding and PvP specs. What I'm seeing studying these two related but different posts (one about actual DPS, the other about representation) is as follows. Fury is twice as popular as arms for PvE DPS, but both warrior DPS specs combined are less popular than either of the popular rogue specs or any of the really popular DPS specs. Arms absolutely dominates warrior PvP, and is one of the single most popular specs in PvP at the moment. Fury's DPS is absolutely middle of the road in 10 and 25 man normal raiding right now, hovering right around the baseline. Fury sees a sudden shift upwards when going from normal to heroic raiding - Fury is a contender for the top DPS spec in 10's, and practically is the top spec in heroic 25's. Now, there's a lot that we can't say based on the data we have from these two posts - for starters, which fury, TG or SMF? These also don't tell us what talents in particular these crushingly dominant arms warriors are taking for PvP (if I had to guess, though, based on the Avatar nerf in patch 5.1 I'd go with a Bladestorm/Avatar combo) or what talents fury is using in PvE. Still, there's still a lot to talk about here. What does all of this mean?
Google experiment lets you visualize the global arms trade in detail
We're all well aware of Google's drive for experimenting with bizarre tidbits from time to time, and the search giant's latest venture is one that gives a rather colorful and very detailed look at the global arms trade. Not surprisingly, the results are quite astonishing thanks to the interactivity and great amount of data Mountain View's been able to add to its visualization -- showing info like the number of imports / exports by each country from as far back as 1992 all the way up until 2010. There's a lot more to it, however, with the ability to also see how much cash was being spent per nation, and whether it was on ammo or civilian / military weapons. For that, you might want to head over to the Arms Trade site, where you'll be able to take Google's experiment for a spin -- literally.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The endless rage treadmill
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. You knew we were going to talk about this again, partially because rage and rage income is, by far, the most important aspect of the warrior class. The majority of warrior balance issues in the past have come from rage income. Whether it be too little rage (as it was in the first few months of The Burning Crusade) or too much rage (as was the argument for fury DPS in ICC at the end of Wrath of the Lich King), we always end up back at the same dance. Since the post earlier this week announcing that enrage would be changed, we've seen a new beta build where exactly that happened, and Ghostcrawler responded to a post on the forums in greater detail for how the rage design in Mists of Pandaria is intended to go. We're going to talk about both of those things this week in some detail, which is code for "Matt gets all long-winded." Luckily, in this online format, I don't actually have to say all of this stuff -- I just type it out. So let's look at the changes to Mists's beta build 15882 first. Many of these changes are merely tooltip changes, but a few definitely are more than that. They're the first stages in the change to enrage promised in that earlier post.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A Cataclysm postmortem, part 2 -- Arms
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. I have yet to be guilded with more than two other warriors at any point in time since Cataclysm launched. I've had more rogues and warlocks than warrior guildmates, and those are the two least-represented classes in World of Warcraft. While I can't prove it, I suspect a lot of the warriors out there are alts, not often played these days. What I do know is, especially in a 25-man raiding situation, I have not been seeing a ton of warriors. However, one thing is indisputable: Arms is the most-played spec of the class. There are more arms warriors than protection and fury combined in heroic Dragon Soul. Arms is, by far, the most popular spec the class has to offer right now in both PvE and PvP. It was not always so. For most of Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm, arms lagged well behind fury both in terms of the damage it could do and the popularity of the spec, although its prominence in PvP kept it afloat. The reduction in the Mortal Strike debuff as Cataclysm launched hurt arms in PvP, but the nerfs to Vengeance and fury's mastery meant that all warrior specs suffered. Arms is just one of the pack there, while repeated nerfs to fury and small adjustments to arms gave it the eventual dominance it now enjoys.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: A simpler and more variable arms spec for Mists
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Sometimes, writing these columns, I struggle to find a way to encapsulate the experience I'm having in game. With the Mists of Pandaria beta, I've sat down and detailed how fury and protection warriors have played out, how they've changed and how they're the same. And so I wanted to do the same for arms warriors. For one thing, arms is the spec I'm currently playing on live, in heroic Dragon Soul, so I'm fairly intimate with the spec and its demands. For another, arms is right now probably the most played warrior spec in terms of its representation in heroic level raiding. So what of arms in the beta? Arms in Mists of Pandaria is arms now, but simpler and more variable. That's it. The changes to arms are the changes to all warriors. Rend's being gone and Mortal Strike's automatically applying Deep Wounds means that all you have to do to light up Overpower in Mists is use your main attack that generates rage, which you would be a crazy mad insane fool not to use.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: In arms' way
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Last month I was in the middle of discussing arms with you when I got sidetracked. Long-time readers of this column were not surprised that yet again something shiny caught my attention and I went crawling off to follow it like a cat with that stupid red bug that is in no way connected to that device the idiot human keeps waving around. At any rate, with patch 4.3 on its way, I thought it was time to start talking about why you should give arms a shot. The first thing I did was dedicate myself to raiding and running instances and doing Battlegrounds as arms more or less exclusively, which I've done for the entire month of November to date. Having done this, I can report the following: Arms is still lagging behind other melee in terms of DPS. It's not terrible, mind -- I don't embarrass myself as arms -- but on fights where fury can pull 28k, arms is lucky to pull 24k or less. What we saw in the state of Firelands DPS post holds true. Arms doesn't perform as well as melee DPS specs that are getting buffed in 4.3, even though arms itself will see no such buffs. However, it's not all bad. Since arms has two bleeds (Rend and Deep Wounds) and a debuff that increased bleed damage taken (Blood Frenzy), if you have to move out of melee range to avoid splash damage or to switch targets, arms can actually fare better than fury. Blood and Thunder means that when properly played, arms can hit a surprising amount of adds with Rend. Rhyolith adds, Rageface and Riplimb's coming into range of Shannox, Majordomo Staghelm's cat phase, and of course the various trash pulls all provide opportunities for arms to spread around bleeds and thus extra damage from Blood Frenzy. Combining arms' mobility and Throwdown's 5-second stun means that if you need to get to something and keep it from moving (Sons on Ragnaros, for example), you're very suited to it.
