It Might Not Save the Wii U, but Nintendo Nailed it with Splatoon!

It's good to be back! I just wanted to preface this article with a little bit of non-game talk about the blog before I delve into the wacky world of squids and kids. It’s been a crazy couple of years since I stopped, and I'm glad to be writing again. I have finally gotten into the swing of things with managing my job, relationships, hobbies, and household. I don't have a lot of time to play games, but I will tell you this: since its launch, my game time has been utterly CONSUMED by Splatoon!

For those who aren’t paying too close of attention to the games industry, or at least don't follow Nintendo's products, Splatoon is a new third-person shooter game (hopefully game SERIES!) from Nintendo on the Wii U. Now, I know what you are thinking "But CBG, Nintendo doesn't make shooters! Their fingers are far from the pulse of the mainstream gaming population!!" and to that I have to say... well... yes, that’s been true for years. Nintendo takes an atypical approach, creating unique products for their all-ages fanbase, who are quickly becoming a niche audience. But, that doesn’t mean that a shooter can’t fit smoothly into the Nintendo body of work. Splatoon is a original and compelling gaming experience that combines mechanics from wide array of popular titles of the last decade from several genres, complemented by the iconic charm, polish, and attention to detail you've come to expect from Nintendo's first-party titles.

Some squid kids looking fresh.What really sets Splatoon apart from its ‘modern military’ or ‘evolved combat’ counterparts is its quirky aesthetic. The world that Nintendo has created is a bizarre combination of bright colors, hip Japanese and American fashion, bumping music, set in an indescribable cutesy-meets-post-apocalypse setting. Thats right, this game about squid-esque teenagers shooting squirt guns at each other in a post-human earth. It’s completely committed to its wild vision.

The customization system does an amazing job of capturing the popular culture trends of today, both East and West, particularly current millenial and hipster fashion: Knit caps, bright multi-colored shoes, tight jeans, flat-brimmed ballcaps, big headphones, patterned hoodies, and all sorts of contemporary and 90's nostalgia-inspired articles. The handful of characters that you do interract with, be they characters from the single-player story mode or even the announcers and vendors for the multiplayer features, are all stylin' as well. The hip flavor even spills over into the looks of the shops, the characters dress, and the language everyone uses.  Splatoon does an amazing job of capturing 'the now,' and I look forward to looking back on it in the future as an amazing gaming and cultural 'snapshot' of 2015 and the 2010s as a whole.

But Splatoon moves beyond the 'form over function' label of other stylish games. The gameplay is not only immensely fun, but designed with engaging mechanics for the casual and hardcore gamer alike. On the base level, the game is a relatively simple, behind-the-back, third-person shooter. What makes it different is the cartoonish and free-flowing squid and ink style instead of the dour realism seen in most shooters.  You are not running around with AK-47s blasting each other with bullets, you are covering everything you see with your team's colored ink.  This is a two-fold change up on the traditions of shooting games: It adds ground-coverage as an objective for players, and it allows for increased player mobility in the form of your character being able to drop into your own team's ink color, sliding fluidly for faster movement. Just ink the floor around where you are and if you are on your own color, you can move quickly. But, when more skilled players are thrown into the mix, the subtleties of these mechanics become crucial, and players have to make a lot of split-second decisions that keeps play exciting.

A squid that is also a kid

Where the ink mechanic really shines is the standard online multiplayer mode: Turf War. Unlike other online shooters, which typically feature a traditional deathmatch as their entry-level online mode, turf war is much more objective-focused.  Turf war is a 4 vs. 4 multiplayer battle mode where the focus is covering as much of the map with your team's ink color as you can.  And that is the ONLY thing that counts in scoring and determining a winner. While it is strategically advantageous and fun to 'splat' (Nintendo's family-friendly alternative to killing) your foes, ultimately the ground coverage is what matters for your team. Only needing to cover the ground to earn points and win games in this mode (and yes, there are other modes) makes this mode approachable for new players and easy to learn, something that Nintendo has always excelled at. While it is a little less skill-intensive than some other modes, I think it is the best representation of the core online gameplay that Nintendo wanted to exhibit.

Now Nintendo does have a, we'll call it 'storied', past when it comes to online multiplayer and online functionality in general.  While it is far from perfect, Nintendo has done an almost uncharacteristically good job in managing Splatoon as a large-scale online game.  Around launch there were problems here and there with disconnects and errors, but for the most part the online play has been very smooth. Matchmaking seems to do a good job of quickly matching teammates to keep play rolling, and there is even a ranked mode with different game types and matchmaking for more advanced players. Now for a little more insider-baseball, the 'net code' (general name for some of the code ran to manage how players interact with each other online) is not great all the time. I rarely feel like I am suffering from lag issues, but once in a great while you will just become splatted by a roller you just jumped over or a splat bomb you narrowly dodge. This can be frustrating at times, when you think you should have gotten a splat, or at least not be splatted yourself, but I don't think I would consider this anywhere near a 'glaring' issue. Its distinctly possible that this could just be due to the fact that match-making occurs internationally and not everyone has the speedy broadband I have access to that can make up for some of the slowness. That issue aside, the overall online experience I have had with the game has been excellent, and it has been made even better with multiple free online content updates!

Camp Triggerfish, one of the several newly-added maps from the free content updates

Thats right, I said multiple free online content updates. Think about that for a moment, Nintendo, the company that brought you the famously awful Smash Bros. Brawl online experience, and up until recently were very anti-DLC, has been rolling out frequent free content updates.  Granted, some of this content was on the disc, and that touched a nerve with a lot of players on multiple levels, but I can honestly say that this process has definitely kept me playing longer than I would for most shooters.  These updates have came in the form of multiple areas of content: new multiplayer maps, new weapons, and even new game modes.  This near constant addition has done an excellent job of making the multiplayer 'stay fresh' through the nearly 100 hours I have put into the game.  Seeing the announcements about new weapons and maps really gets me excited to try them out in a way that I haven't been excited about an online multiplayer game in some time. While the prospect of going on a tear with a new ink brush or a shooter with new abilities does excite, nothing has gotten me as excited for a long Splatoon inking session quite like Splatfests.

Starting on July 4th, the first of now several special events called 'Splatfests' started.  They are fun 24-hour special events in game that changed up the game world and rewarded players for playing frequently during the duration. Splatfests allow players to pick one of two possible rival sides and battle team vs. team and see which team prevails at the end of the event.  Splatfest events are regional, and themes so far have included picking sides in classic rivalries such as Cats vs. Dogs, Rock vs. Pop, and Roller Coasters vs. Water Slides. During Splatfest, players are greeted with a new menu, new music, a city plaza in full party-mode complete with big screens showing off friendly smack-talk about teams, and the fan-favorite pop-star characters Callie and Marie performing on mobile stages. When queueing for online multiplayer during these events, the turf war mode is the only available way to play, but to keep it interesting they expand the number of available maps in rotation and match you up with just other players who picked the same team as you.  The whole thing really has a great team unity feel and I found that in general players really tried to play even more as a team than usual because everyone is unified under the flag of their splatfest team! At the end of each Splatfest, each player who participated is rewarded for both how they played as an individual and how well their team did as a whole. Players are rewarded with an alternate currency ('Super Sea-Snails' because everything has to be aquatic-life related) that can be used to change or upgrade your equipment. Scoring is based on a combination of how popular your team was and how many games each team won, but thanks to rewarding based on individual performance, you still feel like you are properly rewarded even if your team was not victorious.

Well, I have been talking a lot about multiplayer and while it does seem to be what Nintendo wanted players to focus on, there is indeed also a single player mode. The single player mode is a mix of platforming and shooting, and pits your hero against an army of alien octopi to rescue the captured Captian Cuttlefish and restore power to Inkopolis by retrieving the stolen Great Zapfish. Yes, the story is as silly as it sounds, and the seafood and aquatic wildlife puns don't stop, but the gameplay itself is well designed and fun. The first couple worlds of the game I found to be a bit bland and simple, but as the game progressed and the difficulty crept up, I found the single player really rewarding. You go through each level section by section dealing with platforming obstacles and defeating octopi, and its structure of shooting platform-to-platform gave it a really good feeling that is reminiscent of the Mario Galaxy series. You get additional story bits via secret 'Sunken Scrolls' that can be found in every level, and it adds a nice incentive to explore everything the designers put in there. Each of the five worlds ends with simple but fun boss fights that are structured in a way you already know and love if you have been fans of Nintendo games in the past. One of the things I really appreciate about the single player is how playing through it actually has an effect on your multiplayer play as well.  I know this concept is not a new one to the genre, but the way it teaches you how to use the sub and special weapons, and some of the subtleties of the mobility of the game. Also, defeating Splatoon's bosses even unlocks weapons for you to use in multiplayer. This is something that I think the Call of Duty's of the world have really been missing out on over the recent years, and it shows by how few people even play through the single player modes in those games. In general, I consider the single player experience a positive one, and even if it doesnt have the amount of content of other Nintendo titles.

Splatoon is not going to single-handedly pull the Wii U out of its slump.  Its not going to change Nintendo's development cycle for the NX. But, it's already sold multiple-millions of copies in both the US and Japan, and I can tell you why: its fun, charming, balanced, well designed, and the non-stop content updates will keep me and many others like me playing for months (or maybe even years) to come! I hope Nintendo can learn from their experiences with Splatoon to improve not only their infrastructure and design in relation to online multiplayer, but keep up the trend of mixing their unique charm with modern day game mechanics! and as always....

Staaaaay Fresh!