Something about Splatoon just doesn’t sit right with me.

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Don’t get me wrong, I’m stoked that Nintendo is venturing into the realm of new IPs. As much as I’m excited for stuff like Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, Yoshi’s Woolly World, Smash Wii U, and a brand new Zelda, the Nintendo I fell in love with was a risky bunch of creative-types that didn’t mind eschewing from the industry norm. But while Splatoon is a good-looking new take on the traditional 5v5 multiplayer that’s been along for what seems like forever, I can’t help but wish it were something different.I wish Splatoon were a single-player, character-based platforming adventure akin to Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and the original Jak & Daxter. Think about it – the mechanics are already there. Splatoon’s smart method of blending combat and traversal would be right at home in a giant, colorful world ripe for exploration. Even the core mechanic of splattering (splatooning?) paint all over the world already feels like an extension of what Nintendo went for in the criminally-underrated Super Mario Sunshine.Imagine if the act of showering the environment in paint, transforming into a squid, and swiftly diving under your Jackson Pollock could be done on a massive scale? Say you suddenly find yourself at the foot of a giant mountain, and you need to get to the top. You could choose to either take a longer, but enemy-filled path spiraled around the base of a mountain, or with the right amount of planning and quick reflexes, use your paint to create a trail right up the side of the thing. The two times I’ve gotten my hands on Splatoon, I couldn’t help but wish its mechanics, ideas, and aesthetics were simply uprooted and placed into a different game.I’m only speaking for myself here, but there are more than enough competitive shooters out there on the horizon to quench my blood-lust. Between Call of Duty and Battlefield’s tried-and-true multiplayer, Evolve and Dying Light’s interesting take on asymmetrical play, the cooperative nature of Destiny and Borderlands, and the upcoming deluge of options in the Halo Master Chief Collection, I’m good on that front. What I’m sorely lacking are games like the aforementioned Mario, Banjo, Jak, and Psychonauts. Hell, even a Blinx reboot would be a welcome change of pace.The 2D character platformer is alive and thriving. This past generation was filled with classics like Braid, Guacamelee!, and Super Meat Boy. There are games on the horizon like Axiom Verge, Ori and the Blind Forest, and the aforementioned Wii U games that Nintendo is working on. But aside from last year’s incredible Super Mario 3D World, it seems like our current landscape is devoid of those adventures that I fell so hard for in the 64-bit era and beyond.I don’t want to say that the genre is dying, because there still are a few folks carrying the dimming torch. Most notably is A Hat in Time , which is an open, honest, and fantastic homage to games like Banjo-Kazooie. After playing a few rounds of Splatoon, I would love a mascot-platformer staring a female squid-kid. The unique form of traversal is already there; throw in a few different colors with their own unique properties and a handful of weird crap to collect like Jinjos and Jiggys, and I’d be all over that game.And that’s not to say that this won’t exist in Splatoon. Nintendo has only shown the same 5v5, territory-based multiplayer at E3 and Gamescom, so there may be hope for some sort of single-player campaign that hearkens back to the 3D platforming glory days of the later ‘90s and early-aughts. But if they don’t, and if Splatoon is a multiplayer-only game, that seems like a huge misstep in my mind.Sometimes I get tired of killing things. Sometimes I just want to explore a great, big, colorful world. I’d love to do that using the core tenants of Splatoon, and I’m holding out hope that Nintendo will make that happen.

Marty Sliva is an Editor at IGN. He will eat every schnitzel in Germany during Gamescom. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty.