The game does offer a few off-line modes that will tie you over, in the event you happen to find a dead time on Live. Mission Mode is a single-player campaign where you take one character through ten levels of increasing difficulty. The missions can easily be beat in under an hour for an average gamer, but the challenge is attaining a decent high score. Small Arms uses a unique continue option, where gamers never run out of them, but each time they deduct half your score. Thus, while beating the game is easy, beating it with a score in the four digits range will be a struggle the first few times through.
The aptly titled Challenge Mode will drive gamers batty trying to reach double-digits in kills. Starting with just three lives, players first have the task of taking out one baddie at a time. After your fifth kill, the game adds a second baddie to the mix. Every four kills, the game graciously gives you "Snack Time"; dropping about a dozen food items around the level to freshen up the life you are on, but no extra lives. Getting to double-digits in kills is, indeed, a challenge.
No game would feel complete without some rather difficult achievements, and Small Arms delivers. With twelve achievements totaling the standard two-hundred achievement points for an Arcade title, Small Arms' points are well earned. Getting the first six will most likely happen within your first few hours of gameplay, however those final six achievements are a good mix of time consuming (winning fifty and one-hundred matches) and very difficult (killing fifty in one round of Challenge Mode). The most interesting of achievements is the viral achievement called "Six Degrees Of Small Arms". Players get the achievement for playing players who have played against the development team; with a higher level gained the closer you are to actually playing them yourself. It is a brilliant concept, whose only downfall is the awarding of zero achievement points.
With a solid fifty-fifty mix of simple and difficult achievements, and ridiculously addictive multiplayer gameplay, at 800 points Small Arms is one of the best purchases you can make on Xbox Live Arcade.
