50 Years of Video Games: Splatoon (Wii U)

While it would be a bit dramatic to call Nintendo’s Wii U console an absolute failure, it certainly underperformed and it’s not hard to find someone who will tell you why they think it happened. The name and game pad controller could have possibly lead to market confusion since it seemed like it might just be a new way to play the Wii and that same controller wasn’t really utilized in many interesting ways even in the games that tried to embrace it, but one element that likely did the console few favors was its lineup of exclusive games. While many of them were excellent in their own right, many were simply continuations of Nintendo’s franchises that weren’t really doing anything new or captivating to draw in players who saw what looked like more of the same. There is a major exception in the lineup of first party titles for the system though, a shooting game that added a unique twist to the way you used your weapons. In 2015’s Splatoon, rather than the focus being on killing other players, your gun shoots a paint-like ink with the main objective actually being to cover more of the ground rather than trying to eliminate the other team.

 

In the game’s standard multiplayer component, two teams of four are pitted against each other in short three minute matches where you’re aiming to coat more of the map’s floor with your ink than the opposition. There is still an incentive to taking out enemy players if you do encounter them, an opponent popping like a water balloon and releasing ink across the ground as well as being removed from play for a short bit so they’re not doing anything productive, but much more important is making sure you are coating the floor in your team’s color. This actually leads to a very interesting approach to weapons, their visual design already leaning a lot more towards toy weaponry but the actual primary purpose of your weapon is to spray the game’s beautifully rendered colorful ink. The standard Splattershot fires small globs rapidly similar to an automatic weapon and you can certainly find other weapons similar in design to real guns, minigun, pistol, and sniper rifle analogues all present but not always working in the way you expect. A sniper rifle’s one-shot long range approach in a typical shooter would be incredibly inefficient in the context of the game’s Turf War mode, so instead the weapon charges up a powerful shot that releases a long line of ink forward that will also deal heavy damage if a player stands in its path. Because you’re essentially painting the battle arenas the weapon designs also lean into more creative weapon concepts like rollers and brushes that quickly color the ground as you move but require opponents to be pretty close if you want to splat them while a bucket can cover a lot of ground and hit opponents well with its huge splashes but runs out of ink more quickly.

Rather than an ammo system all the weapons rely on an ink canister shown on the back of the game’s playable Inkling characters. When the tank runs dry you won’t be able to color the world or fight, so at this moment the secondary trait of these young kid characters comes into play. Inklings are actually squids able to shift into a mostly human form, but by turning back into a squid you can dive into ink of your color to replenish your reserves without removing any ink from the ground. Not only is this a quick way to refill, but while a squid you can swim through your own ink to move faster, avoid detection better, or even scale walls. If you’re standing in the other team’s ink though you will take damage and are unable swim through it, so not only is coloring the ground important towards victory, it also gives you a new way to travel and exert control over the map. Many of the multiplayer maps are fairly condensed with a few routes to travel despite both halves being a reflection of each other. You are able to launch yourself towards a teammate when respawning so you don’t always need to cross the map to get back to the front line, but at the same time making sure you’re retaining color control of spaces may mean teamwork or divide and conquer strategies might suit your team’s specific weapons better. You are asked to actually select your weapon of choice before you even know what your team will be using so you can end up in a situation where your team overspecializes in one approach like close range paint roller fights or long range charger sniping, but luckily you aren’t even just stuck using the one weapon.

 

Each gun comes with a back-up tool of sorts. Some of these are obvious in their usefulness, a few variations on bombs able to provide a different attack type to cover your bases. Tossing one around a corner or leaving a trap add a bit more to the action, but already Splatoon had a pretty good balance at play. Whether you’re good at fighting players or not you can still contribute to the team’s success, the focus on coloring the arena floor in your ink not only helping towards the main goal but giving your allies the tools for quick movement. In fact, both defeating players and coloring the ground will build up energy towards a powerful ability, things like an ink air strike, the ability to turn into a deadly giant squid, or a speaker that blasts out a hall of deadly sound giving the play a few surges of exciting variability even once you know all the basic weapons in play. Ranked modes do shift things away from the more accessible fighting style of Turf War though. Splat Zones becomes about controlling specific areas with ink so there’s more focus while Tower Control has players competing to stand atop a large cube so it will travel towards the enemy’s side of the map.  Rainmaker probably feels like the biggest break though since it isn’t about territory control at all, instead two teams try to grab a powerful weapon that shoots tornadoes of ink when charged while the goal is to get it to the other team’s spawn point without losing it. The importance of coloring the areas still exists in all modes due to its contribution to refilling ammo and fast movement, but separating modes where better teamwork and a greater focus on interacting with the other team is key does mean that players who would benefit from the more casual friendly focus on inking over fighting don’t dive into harder forms of play by mistake.

When you first turn on the game though, the game isn’t going to dump you right into multiplayer. Instead, Splatoon wants to introduce its world and style to you, so the hub area of Inkopolis is put front and center with its leanings towards 1990s urban fashion and extreme sports. The Inklings in town are wearing sneakers, t-shirts, and sports gear, all appropriate for what is essentially an extreme exaggeration of paintball. The fashion does serve a practical purpose, your headwear, shoes, and shirt all providing bonuses during a battle without any being so drastic that it feels like it will definitely lead to a win. However, if you want to have more ink in your tank, more damaging shots, faster movement, or other little but helpful bonuses, you’ll need to visit the shops in Inkopolis run by sea creatures. Performing well online will level you up so more weapons are available for purchase and you’ll get cash from each match that can buy you new clothes, and while trying to look good might not always line up with the little bonuses the gear provides, there’s also no true dud gear, simply ones that might suit different play styles.

 

The aesthetic comes across in a few other areas as well. The music hits on a few different genres but the energetic rock for play, relaxing reggae for menus, and even the techno and club sounds for single player moments all use a fake language for the lyrical elements that can sometimes make them sound ethereal and funky while other times makes a few tracks a little obnoxious. Many of the multiplayer maps are styled after areas appropriate for its visual time period even though the Inklings seem to live far in Earth’s future. Arowana Mall, Blackbelly Skatepark, Camp Triggerfish, all of them have the air of places kids of the 90s would visit or be familiar with and the different concepts open up opportunities for different design concepts. It’s a bit harder to say places like Port Mackerel, Saltspray Rig, or Museum D’Alfonso fit the theme, but by adding new types of barriers or moving environmental pieces as well as layering the vertical space differently to suit the theme of the stage you do get a good variety even though the available stages are limited. Each day a few levels are selected for play and presented by a cute pair of pop idols called Callie and Marie, and while their short presentation is a bit entertaining, they are saying that you’ll only experience a few stages that day. This does mean you get to know the levels well if you stick with them but also might mean a day of play might not seem so appealing if you don’t like the picks. There is local multiplayer as well even though the one on one format doesn’t suit the style of play too much, but it does at least ensure a way to play if the online scene ever completely dies.

 

Splatoon does have a single-player adventure as well, it taking only a few hours to complete but still trying to make creative use of the ink in a level based campaign. In the world of Splatoon the Inklings lead pretty peaceful lives, but the Octarians resent them and so stole the Zapfish that power their big cities. The player is appointed an agent under the elderly Cap’n Cuttlefish to head into Octo Valley to retrieve the Zapfish, but the Octarians come in many more varieties than the Inklings. As you move through a level you’ll fight tentacles with faces, rolling cycloptic balls, and floating fat creatures that all utilize ink in their attacks. The Octarians often focus on direct aggression with their ink attacks so you fight your way past them quite often, the Octolings even behaving like human players with similar weapons to your own, but some levels feature things more focused on messing with your ink or asking for it to be used in creative ways. Levels might have you expanding sponge platforms by spraying them or creating rails you can ride across so long as they have a consistent ink line going, but you also find robots that wash away your ink trails or march around dumping a shower of the enemy ink to deny you space. Boss battles also exist where you often need to figure out how to move up onto a giant Octoweapon or disable it so you can hurt it, but most of them and the normal levels are fairly easy where novel ideas sustain things more than challenge. The final boss is an enjoyable gauntlet though and features an excellent and exhilarating music track near its end, but mostly this adventure feels like its more to acclimate you to the game while also giving you some nifty ideas to play with without many of them being too deeply explored or implemented elsewhere.

THE VERDICT: Dripping with its specific style as well as the beautifully colored ink that ends up coating everything, Splatoon creates an appealing little world even though the single player campaign mostly lightly touches on the potential of its shooting system rather than exploring it in a captivating way. Much of the enjoyment of the game comes from its multiplayer element though and the battle system allows players to consistently contribute even when they’re on their own, the territory control elements adding an interesting extra layer to team combat. Some ideas like the map rotation and loadout system do box in the online play, but the snappy matches make it easy to pop in with a new weapon if you do need to inject something fresh into some simple addictive fun.

 

And so, I give Splatoon for Wii U…

A GOOD rating. Being locked into your weapon when a match starts does impose some limits on how Splatoon can be played, a team can essentially be at a huge disadvantage from the start just because they didn’t know what their allies were going to be using, but short matches with frenetic paces do mean that you can quickly get through a lopsided match and find a new one that hopefully will go better. Turf War’s design is incredibly smart in giving every player a way to contribute that keeps them constantly engaged with the victory condition, the ground covering goal satisfying as you see more of the map your color while also having a practical purpose since it increases your navigation options. Ideas like map rotation likely exist to keep players playing over multiple days rather than burning out in long sessions so that the online scene wouldn’t shrivel up quickly so it doesn’t really damage the experience too much, and the gear system seems balanced well not to afford major advantages to people who have played for longer. The different modes of Ranked play do demand more skill but also seem to move more towards player combat where the game feels a bit simpler due to the smart limits of your weapons, but Splatoon never really sinks below a base line of constant energetic action. Save for moments in single-player where a gimmick might require a little thought or you’re trying to collect extras like the documents that add more story to the world even it is trying to keep you moving forward into small moments of quick action despite sometimes feeling rather straightforward. A pronounced in-your-face personality makes it all the more memorable too, but taking time to color in the world can also make the action feel a little less gripping since it’s not like the floor is going to make you work for your progress when you splatter it with your paint-like ammunition.

 

Splatoon would continue on Nintendo’s next console and slowly slip in beside other long-running franchises as a face of the brand, but on the Wii U it was one of the few major titles unique to it that tried to bring something truly different. It tried something new in the shooter space while bringing with it a style that both stood out from the crowd and created a world more interesting than simply a canvas for your colorful ink. It still didn’t feature the kind of gameplay twist that would buoy the flagging Wii U but it did give the system something distinct compared to more Mario platformers and Zelda remakes. Splatoon did arrive a little late to the party too, the Wii U set to die less than two years from this game’s release, but it showed Nintendo that innovation and evolution in game design could pay off with something that could become just as beloved as franchises that were nearing their forties.