Game Details Developer: Nintendo

Platform: Wii U

Release Date: May 29, 2015

Price: $60

Links: Official Website Nintendo: Wii UMay 29, 2015: $60

If there's an online gaming trend, you can bet your ass Nintendo has shown up embarrassingly late to the party. Multiplayer modes, friend lists, in-game voice chat, downloadable games, bug fixes, DLC, even smartphone gaming—for nearly a decade, the company has been too busy catching up to lead or innovate in this space.

Such a track record puts a lot of pressure on Splatoon, Nintendo's first game to primarily focus on online multiplayer. (We wrote at length about that very issue earlier this month, but to wit: Nintendo hasn't launched a game with an online versus shooting mode in nine years.) In good news, that fact has put the developer in a position to take exactly the kinds of risks that make this four-on-four battler so promising. The game's paint-to-claim-turf conceit is refreshing, and its best ideas pump new blood into the third-person shooter genre.

There is absolutely fun to be had in a good Splatoon battle, but the catch here is the future tense. Splatoon reveals more than a few signs of immaturity in the online gaming space, but its worse offense sees Nintendo catching up, unfortunately, with another big gaming trend of late. This is yet another retail launch of an unfinished game. The version of Splatoon we'd like to play—different from the one people are about to spend $60 on—evidently hasn't been made yet.

A long ways from Bob Ross





























The game's primary "turf war" mode pits teams of four against each other in symmetrical arenas with a single, simple goal: coat the ground in paint. Before battle, players can choose from a variety of weaponized brushes and implements that would make Bob Ross weak at the knees, from a Super Soaker to a giant roller brush to a very, very messy paint uzi.

Once a match's two-minute timer starts, players must shoot or roll to cover as much of the arena with their color as possible, and the action heats up when battling teams collide in a map's central point. That's when the "weaponized" part of the arsenal comes into play; if an opponent is drenched in the enemy's color, he or she is "knocked out" and must wait to respawn, which gives the other team a great opportunity to lay down an opposing coat.

Don't waste too much time accumulating kills, though. Victory and experience points come from having more of your color on the battlefield when the whistle sounds. But the paint isn't just about points; it also lets players quickly cross the battlefield, because Splatoon's attitude-laden, paint-blasting teens also happen to be, er, squids. With a tap of a button, players morph into a fast-swimming cephalopod that can zip through its friendly color more quickly. For strategic purposes, these squids can scurry up and over most walls covered in friendly paint as well.

Paint-swimming is crucial stuff for advanced Splatoon play. It enables fast escapes, it helps players reach key towers in the middle of arenas, and it offers hiding points anywhere a player lays down some paint. Forget the tired cliché of chest-high cover. This swimming mechanic has sold us as something we'd happily revisit in other third-person shooters.

Along with primary paint weapons, players also have access to a secondary weapon—a variety of grenades, for the most part—and a special attack. The latter can't be triggered until a player has put down enough paint during a match, at which point they can click the right stick down and immediately, temporarily equip anything from a "paintzooka" to a giant wave attack to a special radar sensor.

Players receive in-game cash at the end of every match, which can be spent on new weapons and outfits. Things like shoes, shirts, and hats aren't just cosmetic; they come with perks like faster swimming speeds, bigger paint tanks, and quicker special-attack reloads.

The weapon store, meanwhile, sells a few weapon types in all: short-range blasters, medium-range machine guns, longer-range "sniper" rifles, and the melee-specific paintroller. A new weapon—usually one you've seen before with slight tweaks to stats like range and speed—unlocks in the store after every level gained by way of experience points, and each weapon is locked to a set of secondary and special weapons. Thus, if you want a sniper rifle with a stun grenade and a super-squid special attack, you're out of luck. From what we can tell, Nintendo didn't include that trio in its pre-arranged packs.

Goin' on a snipe hunt?

On paper, all of Splatoon's elements look quite good (and not just because of the bright splashes of paint, yuk yuk), but they don't come together to form a smooth online-battling experience.

For one, weapons don't feel all that distinct from each other, at least in any satisfying ways. The sniper class makes this particularly apparent, because while players are asked to hold the shot button down to "charge" full-range sniper shots, those charged shots don't extend very far—not even twice as far as the machine gun class. In practice, that range reduction is too weak to be worth the speed trade-off.

Really, none of the weapons hew well to the on-screen reticule, because they all have a scattershot effect—assumedly because Nintendo wants players to focus on painting. That's all well and good, but these are weaponized paintguns, and there's a clear "respawn delay" benefit to knocking a foe out. Had Nintendo shipped a few classes that were better at fighting and worse at painting, we'd better appreciate the choice and the inherent bonuses and flaws that come with each. But we got only one battle-minded loadout, and that shotgun-style gun was also too slow and inaccurate for its supposed power boost.

This might be because Splatoon's net code was pretty wonky in preview sessions—ones that hosted no more than 200 players, as opposed to the thousands who will assumedly descend upon Splatoon once it hits retail. We're not sure whether to blame weapon balancing or net code, but we consistently performed best with the uzi class—a weapon with high firing rates and "low" range (though, again, in Splatoon, that's not saying much). Surprisingly, because it offered more range than the paintroller melee class, the uzi outperformed the roller all of the time. We'd even have enemies touch us with the roller and survive, thanks to laggy moments (all while connected via gigabit on our end).

The other major equipment issue is that outfits come with perks—or, more crucially, that higher-level outfits come with more perks. This isn't a Call of Duty-style situation where advanced players get a greater variety but are still subject to the same ultimate in-game limits. Instead, people who've played longer get more perks in all, and their benefits stack. The more you play, the more powerful you become. Should you jump into the fray as a noob, prepare to slog through at least eight levels—roughly 5 to 6 hours of battling—to get to the second tier of wearables, let alone the maxed tier at level 15 (which'll take you another 5 to 6 battle hours).