Developed by: Nintendo EAD
Genre: Third-Person Shooter, 3D Platformer
Game System: Wii U (Digital Download or Retail)
Regions Where Available: Japan, Europe, North America, Australia
Price: $59.99
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When you first boot up the game you’ll be told that the Great Zapfish is missing, a creature that powers all of Inkopolis. In the single-player mode it’s revealed that it was taken by the “Octarians,” a race of octopi who have been at war with the Inklings for a long time now. You’re dubbed “Agent 3” of the Squidbeak Splatoon and go off to fight the Octarians and save the Zapfish! Splatoon is Nintendo’s take on the extremely popular online multiplayer shooter genre, but it’s not just a generic Call of Duty clone like a lot of shooters are nowadays. The differences start with the fact that instead of a depressing post-apocalyptic zombie-filled wasteland as your battlefield, you have a happy post-apocalyptic humanoid fish filled utopia called Inkopolis as the setting! (By the way, this game has a lot of fish puns, and most of them are even worse than Krill of Duty.)
You play as “Inklings,” kids who use different weapons to shoot ink everywhere and can turn into squids to swim in the ink, defying all laws of physics that I can think of, though this is a video game where you can change between a human and a squid, so the laws of physics kind of went out the window. The main game mode, “Turf War,” has you and your team trying to cover as much of the map as possible in your color ink. Unlike most games in the genre, killing players (or splatting them as it’s called in this game) will only leave them out of the playing field for a few seconds and doesn’t actually contribute to your score. The team that covers most of the map with their ink wins. “Regular Battles” will put you up against anybody around the world regardless of what level you are, which can be rather annoying. Luckily, “Ranked Battles” are unlocked once you get to Level 10, which only gives you players of your skill level. The game also randomly chooses what color your team’s ink is, and I’m disappointed that you can’t actually choose what the color is. The closest thing to that is an option to randomly choose between orange and blue.
You cover the map with ink using a variety of weapons each under one of four different classes: The rapid-fire Shooters, the giant paint-rollers, the charged high-powered weapons, and the buckets of ink that you throw around. My personal favorite class is the buckets of ink because they cover a lot of ground really fast and it’s easier to splat players, plus they’re just buckets of ink that you throw around! It’s basically the Wicked Witch’s death scene from The Wizard of Oz in video game form! There’s a lot of weapons within those classes, each with their own special traits. Each weapon also has a sub weapon that you can use like the “Inkstrike,” which is basically a nuclear paintball bomb, and the Kraken, which turns you into an invincible Kraken for a short amount of time! The sub weapons are a great tool towards victory. If only I knew how to use them effectively. I just play games, I’m not good at most of them! You can buy weapons at a shop in the hub world. Speaking of which…
The hub world is the place where you basically do everything in the game besides gameplay. You can buy gear to customize your avatar in the shops, as well as weapons from the weapon shop. The shopkeepers won’t actually let you buy anything until you level up enough, which is a good thing since it forces you to get used to the basics and when you know them well enough you can try out new items with different abilities. The different clothing items, separated into shirts, shoes, and hats (but no pants customization, as one quick look at the Splatoon Miiverse community will tell you,) also come with special modifiers to gameplay, like faster respawn times or more powerful ink. The hub world also lets you see other players’ avatars, and if you have Miiverse enabled you can actually see posts that they’ve made. You can also order clothing items that other avatars are wearing from Spyke the sea urchin street urchin. At the weapon shop different weapons will be locked until you level up enough, even beyond the Level 4 minimum for anybody in the shop to even sell anything to you. This can be annoying at times considering that the only way to level up is to score points, and the best way to score points is to win battles, and to win battles you need good weapons, and to get good weapons you need to level up, and it just keeps going around in an infinite circle.
I haven’t even mentioned my favorite part of the game: the single-player campaign! Each level has its own gimmick that sets it apart from the rest. Be it a maze of ink showers that will splat you instantly or moving through a course while fighting CPU clones of your player character, I find it difficult to get bored of the game! You can even find out more about the history of the “Inklings” and “Octarians” by collecting the Sunken Scrolls hidden in every level. The only complaint I can find some people having is that it’s pretty easy, but that’s never really been a bad thing to me! It’s definitely worth your time! There’s also a mode where you compete against a friend to pop as many balloons as possible, but it’s not as fun as the other two modes. It would’ve been better to have a way to play “Turf War” on one Wii U.
Splatoon is Nintendo’s first attempt at the shooter-genre, and it’s definitely not a rough draft! With fun gameplay in multiplayer and single-player that puts a twist on the common objectives in the genre, along with Nintendo’s first new universe in years with an interesting story behind it, I give this game 8 squids out of 10. It’s a great game, but there are a couple things that could have been improved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additional Content
Splatoon has it’s own series of amiibo that will unlock special challenges if you scan them intoSplatoon. Each challenge is a single-player stage with a new modifier, like having to beat the level on one tank of ink or using a Charger weapon instead of the Shooter. Once you beat one set of challenges you’ll unlock new gear to customize your Inkling. These challenges make the game I personally haven’t played the challenge modes, but I say if you like the single-player campaign and want more of it, or maybe you just want the cool rewards for beating the challenges, you should get it. The Inkling Girl and Inkling Boy are available separately for $12.99 each, and the Inkling Squid is available exclusively with the other two in a pack priced at about $35 at launch.
Genre: Third-Person Shooter, 3D Platformer
Game System: Wii U (Digital Download or Retail)
Regions Where Available: Japan, Europe, North America, Australia
Price: $59.99
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When you first boot up the game you’ll be told that the Great Zapfish is missing, a creature that powers all of Inkopolis. In the single-player mode it’s revealed that it was taken by the “Octarians,” a race of octopi who have been at war with the Inklings for a long time now. You’re dubbed “Agent 3” of the Squidbeak Splatoon and go off to fight the Octarians and save the Zapfish! Splatoon is Nintendo’s take on the extremely popular online multiplayer shooter genre, but it’s not just a generic Call of Duty clone like a lot of shooters are nowadays. The differences start with the fact that instead of a depressing post-apocalyptic zombie-filled wasteland as your battlefield, you have a happy post-apocalyptic humanoid fish filled utopia called Inkopolis as the setting! (By the way, this game has a lot of fish puns, and most of them are even worse than Krill of Duty.)
You play as “Inklings,” kids who use different weapons to shoot ink everywhere and can turn into squids to swim in the ink, defying all laws of physics that I can think of, though this is a video game where you can change between a human and a squid, so the laws of physics kind of went out the window. The main game mode, “Turf War,” has you and your team trying to cover as much of the map as possible in your color ink. Unlike most games in the genre, killing players (or splatting them as it’s called in this game) will only leave them out of the playing field for a few seconds and doesn’t actually contribute to your score. The team that covers most of the map with their ink wins. “Regular Battles” will put you up against anybody around the world regardless of what level you are, which can be rather annoying. Luckily, “Ranked Battles” are unlocked once you get to Level 10, which only gives you players of your skill level. The game also randomly chooses what color your team’s ink is, and I’m disappointed that you can’t actually choose what the color is. The closest thing to that is an option to randomly choose between orange and blue.
You cover the map with ink using a variety of weapons each under one of four different classes: The rapid-fire Shooters, the giant paint-rollers, the charged high-powered weapons, and the buckets of ink that you throw around. My personal favorite class is the buckets of ink because they cover a lot of ground really fast and it’s easier to splat players, plus they’re just buckets of ink that you throw around! It’s basically the Wicked Witch’s death scene from The Wizard of Oz in video game form! There’s a lot of weapons within those classes, each with their own special traits. Each weapon also has a sub weapon that you can use like the “Inkstrike,” which is basically a nuclear paintball bomb, and the Kraken, which turns you into an invincible Kraken for a short amount of time! The sub weapons are a great tool towards victory. If only I knew how to use them effectively. I just play games, I’m not good at most of them! You can buy weapons at a shop in the hub world. Speaking of which…
The hub world is the place where you basically do everything in the game besides gameplay. You can buy gear to customize your avatar in the shops, as well as weapons from the weapon shop. The shopkeepers won’t actually let you buy anything until you level up enough, which is a good thing since it forces you to get used to the basics and when you know them well enough you can try out new items with different abilities. The different clothing items, separated into shirts, shoes, and hats (but no pants customization, as one quick look at the Splatoon Miiverse community will tell you,) also come with special modifiers to gameplay, like faster respawn times or more powerful ink. The hub world also lets you see other players’ avatars, and if you have Miiverse enabled you can actually see posts that they’ve made. You can also order clothing items that other avatars are wearing from Spyke the sea urchin street urchin. At the weapon shop different weapons will be locked until you level up enough, even beyond the Level 4 minimum for anybody in the shop to even sell anything to you. This can be annoying at times considering that the only way to level up is to score points, and the best way to score points is to win battles, and to win battles you need good weapons, and to get good weapons you need to level up, and it just keeps going around in an infinite circle.
I haven’t even mentioned my favorite part of the game: the single-player campaign! Each level has its own gimmick that sets it apart from the rest. Be it a maze of ink showers that will splat you instantly or moving through a course while fighting CPU clones of your player character, I find it difficult to get bored of the game! You can even find out more about the history of the “Inklings” and “Octarians” by collecting the Sunken Scrolls hidden in every level. The only complaint I can find some people having is that it’s pretty easy, but that’s never really been a bad thing to me! It’s definitely worth your time! There’s also a mode where you compete against a friend to pop as many balloons as possible, but it’s not as fun as the other two modes. It would’ve been better to have a way to play “Turf War” on one Wii U.
Splatoon is Nintendo’s first attempt at the shooter-genre, and it’s definitely not a rough draft! With fun gameplay in multiplayer and single-player that puts a twist on the common objectives in the genre, along with Nintendo’s first new universe in years with an interesting story behind it, I give this game 8 squids out of 10. It’s a great game, but there are a couple things that could have been improved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additional Content
Splatoon has it’s own series of amiibo that will unlock special challenges if you scan them intoSplatoon. Each challenge is a single-player stage with a new modifier, like having to beat the level on one tank of ink or using a Charger weapon instead of the Shooter. Once you beat one set of challenges you’ll unlock new gear to customize your Inkling. These challenges make the game I personally haven’t played the challenge modes, but I say if you like the single-player campaign and want more of it, or maybe you just want the cool rewards for beating the challenges, you should get it. The Inkling Girl and Inkling Boy are available separately for $12.99 each, and the Inkling Squid is available exclusively with the other two in a pack priced at about $35 at launch.