These days, it's a rare treat to see a game on the Xbox Live Arcade that isn't just a lacklustre port of a tired old coin-op game from the 1980s...sure we've seen some great originals like Cloning Clyde and Outpost Kaloki X, but these new gems are few and far between. So it's no surprise that the Xbox 360 debut for Gastronaut studios, Small Arms, has been hotly anticipated by many fans of the Xbox Live Arcade. But does this gun-heavy Super Smash Bros. clone live up to expectations?

The answer is yes, and no. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Nintendo classic Super Smash Bros. the easiest way to describe Small Arms is as a four-player, single-screen fighting game with a heavy emphasis on projectile weapons rather than melee combat. There's little pretence at a story (something about mutants and...actually, beyond that I haven't got a clue); basically you pick from a range of oddball characters – each with a different starting weapon – and then have at it in a variety of arenas. The character design is great, ranging from a medieval knight to a mutant chicken-man, but sadly the weapons are the real stars. It would have been great if each character had unique attributes or at least a special move of their own, but this isn't the case.

So it really just boils down to picking a protagonist whose choice of weapon suits your own tastes. The guns include the usual bullet-based machineguns or sniper rifles, as well as toxic bio-guns, ice-rays, and flamethrowers. Every gun has a powerful alternative-fire mode that chews up more ammo but can dish out some pretty lethal damage. The trick, then, is to balance your choice of primary or secondary fire modes with the fairly limited amount of ammo you can carry. During each battle weapons and ammo do respawn, but not as frequently as you might expect, particularly ammo. This is designed to encourage players to sample a variety of weapons, and while this works, it can be pretty frustrating to have to switch to a firearm you aren't as familiar or competent with.

Small Arms consists of a couple of play options: training, Mission Mode, Challenge Mode, Battle Mode and shooting gallery. Training is self explanatory, and the shooting gallery is just direct access to a mini-game you'll encounter during mission mode. Mission mode is pretty much what would be considered "story mode” if Small Arms had such a thing...it's worth noting that the game says you should play this to uncover the history and story behind Small Arms, but as far as I can tell this never happens. What it does do is allow you to unlock more characters to play with, although there's less then half-a-dozen to acquire in this way. Mission mode thus is just a way to battle through a series of battles that do little besides act as an extended training ground for the real deal: challenge mode.

Challenge Mode is a survival game that pits you against an unending supply of adversaries and a limited stock of lives. Every 3 rounds you'll get "Snack Time!” which allows you to replenish your health, and scoring enough points will give you an extra life. There's a few achievements attached to this mode, and it can be very tough indeed especially if you're just starting out. But I mentioned earlier, the biggest hurdle can often end up being the lack of ammo or weapons, and if you aren't careful you'll find yourself in a position where you have to use fairly weak melee attacks to try and off your foes. That, and some fairly loose controls that see you slipping and sliding around the screen, and low-gravity jumping that makes it all too easy to overshoot your mark and sail off the screen to your death.

All of this is really just a preparatory step for the multiplayer Battle Mode, which can be played locally on the one console with four players, or via Xbox Live. Performance on Xbox Live is excellent with minimal lag most of the time, although the game's camera can be a bit of a pain. It's safe to say that a lot of fun can be had in the crazy four-player games, which usually devolve into button-mashing gunplay followed by bunny-hopping and frantic scrambles for guns, health and ammo. It's a shame there aren't any other power-ups included like invincibility or invisibility, because Small Arms is a silly game and silly items like this would only serve to make its multiplayer more hilarious. As it stands, your options are limited to choosing a timed or stock battle and which map to play on. Still, it would make for a great four-person party game, especially if Gastronaut support the game with some Downloadable Content in the future.