
Splatoon marks Nintendo’s first foray into the online
shooter market, but it does a lot more than add bright cartoony graphics to the
genre. Okay yes, it does add bright cartoony graphics because that’s Nintendo’s
thing, but it does more than that.
The game revolves around shape shifting creatures called
‘Inklings’. These can either take the form of fashionable kids with tentacles
for hair or squishy little squid like beings that can swim through colored ink.
Colored ink is central to the game. All of the weapons that the kids brandish
shoot, paint and splash their teams color, and once its daubed all over the
place, the squid forms can swim quickly through that ink, even travelling up walls. While
the game has been shown off at a few trade shows, the freely available Splatoon
Testfire demo has offered the first chance for your average Wii U owner to play
the game.
I was fortunate enough to be able to get online for all
three hours that the Testfire was available and found the game to be as
fun and fresh as early impressions promised. Much more surprising though for a
test like this, especially coming from a company that isn’t known for the
quality of their online netcode, was how stable and lag free the game was.
This was meant to be a stress test, and the only evidence I
saw of the servers breaking a sweat was the occasional delay between shooting
ink at the floor and when I’d see it displayed on screen. While fending off
‘bad guy’ inklings, I never once saw signs of lag and given the number of
Japanese names I saw I’m pretty confident that I wasn’t just playing with my
neighbors down the road.
Testfire lets people get a taste of the ‘Turf War’ mode on
two maps. This mode sees battling teams of inklings competing to paint more of
the floor in their color ink than the enemy team in fast paced three minute
rounds, using a variety of ink themed weapons.
Due to the success of the first three sessions, Nintendo is
offering people one last chance to try the game out before it hits stores. When
it does the game will also offer a single player mode in which you fight
against evil Octopi in addition to Turf War, and Nintendo’s plan is to slowly
roll out new modes, levels, gear and weapons in the following weeks and months
for no additional fee.

I for one hope to have all three amiibos sat next to me on
the coffee table when I finally get a chance to get back online for more ink
slinging fun come the end of the month. Splatoon will retail for $59.99 and
will be available in stores and on the Wii U eShop.
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