The state of the Nation.
You'd be hard-pressed not to know about Splatoon. One of the distinct disadvantages to having a Wii u is that there never seems to be anything to play on it. Sure, you can kart around with Mario and his friends, or smash the living daylights outta, well, Mario and his friends again, but there never seems to be anything different for the Wii u. It's Mario, indies and retro gaming, and that's about it. It's amidst this drought of creativity that Splatoon comes, promising something entirely new: casual non-violent squad based shooting. It sounds more like random words stapled together than an actual genre, and with good reason. Squad based shooters have never been particularly casual, be it in a Galaxy far far away or in the muddy fields of a perpetually invaded Europe, the level of entry has always seemed so darn high and the risk of getting yelled at all to real. Nintendo, when it's not busy having its flagship characters beat the snot out of each other, has a distaste for violent content which might sound like an odd restriction to put on a squad based shooter. "Take this gun and fight your friends. But you can't be violent about it!" It's with this track-record and these restrictions that Splatoon crawls out of the womb and unto the internet for the very first time. An attempt at bringing to life the genre of "casual non-violent squad based shooting", and I'll be a darned if it doesn't succeed at that.
Instead of painting you a picture, I will simply give a blow-by-blow description of the highlight of the game for me.
Splatoonification!
Upon signing in to the game I am immediately given the option of choosing my gender and the color of my eyes. I opt for a green-eyed guy, as that's pretty much what I am in real life and some things are hard to escape. Following this, there are no further customization options. They must be saving that for the actual release. Oh well.
With gender and eyes firmly selected, a new screen explodes before me. I am brought to a tutorial that covers the basics of the game. Shooting paint is fun, and I'll be Bob's uncle if it doesn't look really good! I move and turn with the sticks, and swing the wii-u controller around to fine-tune my aiming. Which at first feels about as natural as trying to dock the starship Enterprise into the Eurotunnel. Luckily, if I manage to twist my arms into some ungodly uncomfortable position, I can always press the Y button to reset the camera and go back to comfortably shooting at everything. I fire paint at the world with the RZ, and once I've put down a nice line of color I can dive into it with LZ to Scrooge Mcduck my way forwards like a rocket. This is easily one of the coolest mechanics I've seen in a good long while. I can swim up walls, beneath fences, and even build momentum to soar across gaps I could never jump with my short stubby legs. Okay, moving and shooting feeels good. I am ready!
I graduate the tutorial with flying colors!
Into the trenches!
Fresh out from boot-camp, I am requested to choose my weapon-set out of four options. There's a machine pistol, the machine-gun I'd already tutorialized with, a roller and what I interpret as a sniper rifle. I opt for the machine-gun and queue up. I was immediately booted out for reasons unknown. I rejoined and moments later find myself waiting for seven strangers to jump in. While waiting in the lobby, Splatoon offers me the chance to play a retro-looking game on the gamepad featuring a jumping squid. The "waiting game" is more boring than doing nothing so I pause the game, and wait for the lobby to fill up instead.
It takes two minutes to fill the lobby, which for a match lasting three minutes is asking a bit much. Then the match starts. My team is orange, and we are up against the nasty purples. The team starts together, charging out onto what looks like an oil platform ready to be painted (preferably orange). Watching the team dash around panting the world looks amazing. I spray the first wall I find, effectively creating a ladder on which I can swim. I have a vantage point atop the wall, and suddenly I spot the other team. Those purple miscreants won't know what hit them. I aim my rifle and squeeze the trigger. Paint shoots from my gun with impunity, then fall and color the floor. I have completely miscalculated the range of my weapon. No matter, I jump down into the puddle I have just made and begin making it larger. The team catches up to me, and we instinctively divided up as we charge forth, painting more together than we ever could apart. That's when the guy (or girl, I honestly couldn't tell) next to me goes down. My screen flashes with purple dots as the full force of the purple team rain down on us. I fire wildly, hitting nothing. I go down in a hail of paint. The camera switches to follow my killer as I await respawn, I can do nothing but watch as the monsters paint over our glorious work. Three seconds later I emerge from the spawn point, ready for vengeance.
The screen on my controller shows the map of the arena, and the position of all my allies. I click on one that appears to be near where I died, and I am instantly catapulted to his location. The battle is still raging, my killer somewhere in the din of hailing paint. Another team member impacts next to me, dropping down like ODST to a paintball match. I rediscover that the R button throws grenades, so I do. In a splash of orange, a purple man explodes into an even larger splash of orange. We hit them hard, we are taking back the square! That's when the roller hits me. I'd seen machine-guns and a sniper-rifle already, but nothing has prepared me for the roller. My second killer is slow, no match for the machine-guns once they fix on him, but I know how deadly he is. Equipped with the roller, he can kill anyone in his path. Slow, but very powerful up-close. The antithesis to the sniper. I respawn again, taking a different route. Careful to paint what I can. After all, victory is not achieved through fighting, but through painting. I avoid combat, painting as much as I can. Then the roller comes charging out from behind cover. I fire and miss. Then die. It doesn't matter, I quickly respawn. I live to paint once more. To repaint what they have painted over. As the three minutes draws to a close I know we have won, the map is far more orange than purple. The battle ends, and the cat judges our effort. I was right, we won. I am the third best on a team of four, I can live with that.
Following the first match, we are immediately returned to the lobby. The same names fill my screen. My killers, my allies. A few strangers. We wait for twenty seconds and the next round begins. My killer is now my ally. Some of my allies are my enemies. This time we have rollers on our team. I fall in behind one of them. The wide roll paints better than my machine-gun ever could, and I realize that a roller would better fit my tactic of staying away from battle in favor of painting. Like Rhodey in Iron Man I silently mutter, "next time". We win the match, even against two rollers. As the points are given out, the splash screen asks if I want to return to the lobby or exit to select a new weapon. I do another tour to the lobby. Another match with mostly the same people, I spend it wishing for a roller. We win, I choose to quit this time.
I arm myself with the roller and jump back into the lobby. My team is gone. I have to wait a few minutes before a new group of people show up. I don't play the waiting game this time. The battle begins, and I am one of two rollers. We charge out together, painting everything. It is glorious. I am purple now, it seems random. Suddenly I come upon the orange threat. As their blasts rain down around me I charged at them. As I crush the first, we both explode in orange and purple. My killer begins to repaint my effort. I respawn, and continue. I swim through the paint, and at the end of the line I see one of THEM painting his cursed color. I swim right for him, fast as a shark. I leap out with my roller in hand, he never sees me coming. He explodes, and his work is undone by his explosive demise. There are many rollers, but this one is mine and with it I will paint the world.
The battles rage, we win more than we lose. I try the machine-gun too, which contributes greatly to our loss. The sniper rifle is also not for me, and we get rolled into the ground without a chance. I decide to stay by my roller and I do.
We have an hour to fight, and it goes by quickly. Suddenly I am removed from the lobby again, this time for the last time. The servers are down, the battle done for now.
The next begins in a few hours. My roller will be ready.
Afterthoughts.
Splatoon is great fun. The action is quick, but you always feel in control. Every death is deserved and every inch stolen and fought for. It's a good game, the controls are tight. The world is pretty. The music is far too catchy and cool. That's a good thing too. This is everything I could ever hope it was so why am I getting bored? I have played for an hour, and it's already starting to feel samey. I worry about the longevity of the game, it doesn't take long for the battles to muddle together into a din of paint and chaos. There is little variation save for what the players themselves bring. As of yet there is no customization of weapon sets or upgradeable skills either. The full release will add more content to prolong the life of the game, this is just a demonstration. I know that, and yet I worry. I will play this game for a few more hours as soon as it lets me. But what then? Will the features of the full release hold my attention, or will the game explode like a slain foe on the battlefield, glorious but quickly painted over and forgotten?
Only time will tell.
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