What happens when you take the arcade fighting of a Super Smash Brothers, but replace the cute Nintendo characters with equally cute instruments of death that shoot with sniper rifles and machine guns rather than hit you over the head with a mallet. You get the enjoyable Xbox Live Arcade romp called Small Arms.

Small Arms is the definition of quick, easy to play, and fast paced action that makes all good arcade games enjoyable. By taking the side scrolling 2D fighting action of Super Smash Brothers and replacing it with gunplay based combat built around a full 360 range of shooting thanks to the right thumbstick (imagine the free roam shooting of Geometry Wars), Small Arms manages to merge them together into a nice little package that has a good, solid core.

The single player based gameplay has you picking one of the warriors, who range from the female ninjas, mercenary cats, mutated chickens, dinosaurs, sniper rifle wielding hitman pigs, and others. Though there are only eight characters selectable from the beginning, you'll be able to unlock an additional four. When all breaks down, there isn't really any differences between the characters beyond what weapon they start out with, so unless you have a particular weapon you'd like to have from the beginning of a match, you'll go with whatever character you think is the coolest.

The levels on which the combat takes place are pretty interesting, ranging from the stationary where nothing much happens, though they look rather nice (an Arabian market for example) to the more split level arenas like one that appears to be on the moon, which has tubes you can slide downwards and elevators you can ride to the top level. However, the most frantic and best designed levels are the constantly moving ones, such as the battles on top of a train or a level that takes place inside the junk caught up in a tornado (one of the most imaginative level designs I've seen in an arcade game recently).

During the single player game, you'll either go head-to-head against another AI computer character or either have to split your plan of action against two or more, until (counting you) there are four combatants on the screen. You win the level and advance if you eliminate all the enemies' lives before yours run out and fail if yours run out first. Early on the game is fairly easy, but can get pretty challenging once you have more players on screen at one time. The single player minded gamer also has a survival mode, where they'll go head to head against one computer opponent at a time, and the game ends when they lose all their lives.

As for the multiplayer, you can go into simple player matches, where you and three people can battle each other over and over if you want, and with this mode you can choose how long battles go, win requirements, etc. Xbox Live has also got Ranked matches, which are very quick games that you can breeze into, pick a character, and quickly get to battling and then back out (in case there is a player you don't like, you don't have to worry about going up against them for long). It is also amazing that, here is this little arcade game that could, and it has a better lag free online experience than some of the top end (I paid $60 bucks for this game) software you can buy for the 360 now. I've played a good many games already, and not once have I experienced lag with all the action happening on the screen. I'm also in and out of matches in usually under a minute, so there is never time when you are waiting around wondering when someone else will show up to play.

Gameplay is very basic, but in a good way. The left thumbstick moves your character, the right thumbstick aims their weapon, the right trigger shoots your main weapon, the left trigger shoots your secondary weapon, X-button picks up weapons and does a melee attack, the A-button jumps (or double jumps) and the Y-button can be held down for a dash attack to get you to new heights. The mechanics are very easy, with ammo depleting as you use it (refill that weapon by finding battery powerups) and health can be replenished by running over meat, fish, and other food objects. However, the best thing about the powerups that drop are all the different weapons.

Weapons in Small Arms each have two different functions: a primary and secondary. For example, hitting the right trigger with the katana attached will have them swing it like an ordinary sword, while a left trigger press will cause you to throw your sword as a spinning boomerang blade of death. The double machine guns are also nice, as they act like normal guns at first, but the secondary attack is this very cool John Woo shot where you character will point one to their left and right side and just spray them. The weapons are varied, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately a good player will know what weapon works best for them, certain levels, and against other players' tactics.

Small Arms is a blast to play, it just remains to be seen how long a lasting effect it will have on Xbox Live and in the player's mind. With only 12 characters (8 to begin with) and a handful of stages, things could become old quickly, but playing online with others should enhance and lengthen the experience, as it is smooth, fluid, and an enjoyable blast. The characters look nicely cartoonish, but it is obvious Small Arms fails to push the 360 to any limits graphically. Thankfully, graphics won't be much of an issue, as you won't have time to stop and smell the flowers, because you'll be too busy jumping to avoid the red beam of a sniper rifle. The sound work is pretty good, however, with all the explosions and character noises, so it will at least sound good even though it might not be the prettiest.

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