Splatoon!

If you’re a Nintendo fan then you should know that they’ve been dishing out some serious information for their future game releases. With an overload of heavy hitter information such as Super Smash Bros, Legend of Zelda and some other Mario franchise titles like Yoshi’s Wooly World and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker some of the other titles may have fallen under your radar, especially if you didn’t watch the live stream. The game I want to focus on is called Splatoon; a new and refreshing take on the 3rd person shooter style game due in 2015 for the Wii U.
The main objective of the game is to not rack up an ungodly amount of kills in order to rack up points and win the round but instead, each team sets out to cover the most ground in their color squid ink! The half squid half urban street tagger characters are armed with old school Super Soakers attached to a Camelbak that shoot out steady streams of ink that both covers surfaces and takes out enemies. They can also toss ink grenades and are even able to get special weapons like ink cannons and giant ink rollers. Just because you’re a squid doesn’t mean you have an unlimited supply of ink however. While in human form, you can see your ink levels deplete on your back so, after shooting for a bit it’s a good idea to pop into squid form to quickly replenish yourself. That’s right, did I mention you can switch between forms whenever you want? In human form you are able to shoot your weapons and are limited to the ground but, when you turn into a squid and dip into your own colored ink you gain crazy speed and can even traverse walls or squish through grates and gates. OH, and you are nearly invisible when you are a squid in your teams ink! If you sit still, no one can see you, if you move, small ripples appear above you but they are still hard to see for those without keen eyes. Be careful though if you travel through your opponent’s ink in either form you will be slowed down greatly! This adds a depth of tactics to the game that I haven’t seen in a 3rd person shooter ever.
The game’s super colorful and playful graphics are pleasant to look at and because the layering of ink is different in every game it makes for an unlimited amount of outcome possibilities. What’s even more interesting is that because while you’re playing, you only have the gamepad’s map to show you the ink coverage (without percentages), it’s nearly impossible to tell who’s winning in evenly matched games. That is, unless you or your enemy is totally owning.In the various matches I watched the games ended in drastic array of percents. Sometimes a team would completely dominate the other with 60%+ of the level covered other machtes ended with a team winning by only .1%!!! That is basically one drop of ink that decided the outcome of that match! How crazy is that?! This adds a level of thrill that I think will keep players excited throughout every match. Plus there’s a dancing cat on the tally screen.In its current state the game is eight player online with two teams of four and this seems to be the path they are sticking to. As someone who thinks this game looks really fun, I hope they also implement some sort of local multiplayer option even if it’s just two on two in smaller maps. I can honestly see my friends and I holding tournaments in my living room and getting quite competitive with each other. Plus, didn’t Nintendo say the Wii U would eventually be able to use two gamepads? Now, that being said, not that much has been announced about the game and there’s still plenty of time before it’s released so, much can still change and be added. I’m extremely hyped to see what becomes of Splatoon and hope it is as much of a blast as it looks.