Splatoon is a really interesting game from Nintendo for many reasons. It’s Nintendo’s first competitive shooter since Metroid Prime: Hunters, one of their first big new IPs for the Wii U, and one of Nintendo’s first forays into the realm of ranked online matchmaking. Any new foray for any games company is bound to have a misstep here and there, so how does Splatoon compare to other modern competitive third person shooter offerings? Read on to find out how much of a splash Splatoon made on us in our first few hours with the game.
To make our early musings on Splatoon even easier to read, we’ll give you some of our thoughts here in point form:
- It’s kind of annoying that you cannot fully skip the “news bulletin” that occurs every time you start the game up (and several times through your playing) that recycles a decent chuck of dialogue to explain what maps will be available in the various modes because they’re quite harshly limited in rotation instead of being randomly chosen from all of the time.
- The aesthetic and general mechanics of the game are excellent — it really is just pure fun to try and paint levels/areas faster than the opposing team and it always looks great while you’re doing it. Character and costume design is also quite solid — Splatoon’s characters all really stand out and are memorable in their own ways.
- The graphics themselves are pretty good, but with the game only seemingly rendering around 720p, it can look pretty aliased when you’re not distracted by the various characters and bold set pieces.
- There’s a decent amount of weapon variety and they’re all balanced pretty decently. Some of the risk/reward trade offs are pretty huge, but when you’re significantly skilled with any class you can become a force to be reckoned with.
- With online multiplayer being a primary component to the game there are still a lot of fundamental flaws with it that will hopefully be patched out or addressed over time like having to completely leave the lobby to change your weapon (you can’t even change it mid-game like most decent shooters let you), the requirement of an absolutely full lobby to start a game (on more than one occasion we had 7 players waiting and the lobby just timed out waiting for an 8th), and the fact that you can’t just vote for maps, that in any play session you’re limited to a random much smaller selection from the pool of maps, and not being able to bring a friend online with you using the same console.
- Local multiplayer (usually a strong suit for Nintendo) is pretty disappointing with only a 1-on-1 balloon popping mode offered.
- The single player mode (while featuring interesting characters) just mostly plays out like a mobile-app-style series of mini puzzle areas instead of the grand, sweeping campaign that this concept really deserves. I was hoping for something a little more adventure/platformer style like Banjo Kazooie or Super Mario 64, but instead you basically just go around entering levels and hopping from puzzle to puzzle until you finish. Imagine how amazing it would have been to explore this game’s unique world more fully using your ink abilities to progress and access new areas! Really amazing, that’s how.
- The loading NES-style games that you can play on the Game Pad while waiting for a match to start are quite fun and charming. An excellent old-style Nintendo addition — much better than the “additions” that take away industry standard shooter features like the ability to communicate with your team or the kind of forced Miiverse inclusion that boils down to the same kind of lobby that we’ve been seeing since Nintendo Land.
- The game refuses to let you use a Pro Controller (my preferred method of control) instead of a Game Pad for single player stuff and it’s kind of frustrating to be forced to lug around that huge deal when you’d rather be streamlined, comfortable and competitive.
Overall, Splatoon has a ton of style, charm and potential, but in contrast to the game’s hip attitude, it still comes off as a bit of a muted experience gameplay-wise. It’s nice that Nintendo is finally letting its gaming masses play outside with one another, but wearing these padded boxing gloves, helmets and elbow/shoulder pads and only being able to play in the corner of the yard nearest the house is still making this a less fun than it could be (even though what’s there is undoubtedly fun).
We’ll have more on Splatoon as a whole in our proper review which is due out after we’ve had a good couple of days to see if the game’s servers can stand up to the strain as amiably as it has been in the press preview period and Global Testfires.
A review copy of this game was provided to us by its publisher