Making an inky mess of the quirky, urban stages in Splatoon

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Inky Warfare

In Splatoon, you customize a squidling and use ink as a weapon. You can toss it on your rivals, or mark your territory in 8-player multiplayer battles. You can even swim in it to travel faster and refill your ink to spray more color on the world. Currency acquired in multiplayer unlocks more weapons sets and special gear.During five hours of hands on time, we got our first tour of campaign, took another crack at turf war, and got to test-drive a new multiplayer mode. Here’s a rundown of what we saw and why Splatoon deserves your attention when it releases this May.Each metropolitan backdrop feels like a canvas, in campaign or multiplayer, and every weapon is built to satisfy a different type of artist. Take the Splat Roller, this whimsical roller brush lays down a soothing coat of friendly ink. You can flick out a deadly spread, too. But its best feature is bulldozing unsuspecting foes from behind. The .52 Gal is much different by comparison. It sports a grenade launcher-like design, one that sprays out heavy ink blobs at a lower rate of fire than some of the other weapons, with a much higher damage rate.

Splatoon Over 100 images 101 IMAGES Take a look at over 100 new screenshots of ink-splattering action.

Campaign Misadventures

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Enter the Splat Zones

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Whether I was using powerful special weapons like the Inkzooka, or the Killer Wail, each one had a distinct feel and tactical use. It’s worth noting that the weapons you unlock come in three-piece sets. There’s one primary, a grenade type, and a special weapon. So if you switch over to the Uzi-like Splattershot Jr., you’re also switching over to Splatter Bombs as a sub weapon and a shield as your special.The design of Splatoon’s single-player mirrors a similar the setup of a stage in Super Mario galaxy. Now, we only played five stages, but each one strings together floating islands that focus on building specific skills, and each has a squid launching sequence you can’t help but identify with the iconic plumber’s Launch Star on Wii.The story follows Cap’n Cuttlefish, an odd-looking war hero who wants you to collect recover the stolen Zapfish from the dastardly Octarians. It’s wacky stuff, for sure.The first few levels teach the fundamentals of shooting, swimming, jumping, speeding through ink tubes, or even using valves of gushing color in combat. We also got to fight grunt-like Octotroopers, squarish Octostamps, and speedy Octolings. Each one has a distinct method of fighting and personality on the battlefield.A new multiplayer mode, called Splat Zones, is one of the objective games you’ll find under Splatoon’s Ranked Battles. In it, players have to capture and hold a single zone until a 100-point timer runs down to zero. As with any objective mode, teams need to work together to press and hold the highlighted zone, and keep out squidy rivals until the victory whistle.Now, Nintendo told us Ranked Battles will not unlock until a portion of the player base reaches level 10 . It wouldn’t reveal how many players that needs to be, but based on our play time, this was a fun alternative to the all out Turf War we saw at E3 2014.We should note that ranked matches separate the player pool by specific letter ranks that range from top tier A+ to C-. The goal is that, for example, A rank players would never play with a C rank squad. Ranks function independently of player leveling system, which unlocks new equipment sets.The rich, colorful ink splashed world of Splatoon is only looking better each time we see it. While we can’t help but miss the idea of voice chat during online skirmishes, we have to admit what Nintendo showed us was still incredibly fun. So far Splatoon has the heart, soul, and attention-to-detail signature of Nintendo’s game. And we’re hoping that the upward trajectory for the modes and features of this adorable squid-based shooter continues.

Jose Otero is an Associate Editor at IGN and host of Nintendo Voice Chat . You can follow him on Twitter