E3 2014: Hands-On With Nintendo’s ‘Splatoon’

Nintendo’s often accused of relying on their classic properties rather than creating new franchises like the days of old. While that’s never been true considering games like Chibi Robo, Endless Ocean, Geist, Magical Starsign, Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Excitebots, (kind of), and many others are real life things, what can’t be argued is that the company rarely displays them in a prominent light. That changed when a quirky little third person shooter stood tall in the sea of your Legend of Zelda‘s and Smash Bros. trailers contained in the Nintendo E3 Digital Event. Splatoon looked like a fun, creative take on the tried and true genre, so I had to jump on the chance to give the game a shot!

As a squad based team shooter, Splatoon‘s objective isn’t to shoot your opponents to death, (even though it doesn’t hurt to do so). Instead, the team has to work together to shoot their ink all over the floors of the battlefield, with the winning team being the one who can claim the most land with their team color within a three minute limit.

Playing as Inklings, squids who can switch to a human form, these guys can transform between stages at will. Taking the human form is the only form where players can shoot, so this state will obviously get a ton of play time. Shooting efficiently is both the key to traversing the land and winning the matches, since walking through enemy ink slows down your speed significantly. This can be helped in a few ways, namely by using the bomb, the bazooka or by defeating opponents.

Using a bomb will splatter a huge area with paint, destroying any opponent who is in its radius in the process. These powerful weapons can only be used when your total ammo is nearly filled, so you’ll have to be careful how you decide to use it. After contributing enough to your team’s success, a meter in the corner fills until its fully charged, giving the player a temporary paint bazooka! This thing leaves a trail of paint when fired, covering an entire straight line of land and destroying any enemy Inklings that stand in its path. And of course, if you do destroy opponents, there’s a huge reward for doing so, with them exploding in a sea of your colored ink, claiming the area around them for your team.

But of course, you can’t shoot without ammo, which is where the squid form comes into play. Transforming sinks your character into the ground, allowing them to fast travel through any ink your team controls while refilling your gun in the process. This works in a variety of ways, including stalking opponents Jaws style or avoiding battle when trying to move into an unclaimed area. And for those times you do get shot down, you can fast travel to the side of any teammate on the map, letting you jump right back into the fray if that’s what you’re aiming for.

My only issue with Splatoon was with the controls, since it used both the right analog stick AND the game pad to aim, throwing off the fine tuning of my shots. While it’s something I could get used to, I really hope you can turn off the gyro controls in the final version, or at least give us the option to use the Wii Remote. That thing was PERFECT for shooters.

Aside from that small hiccup, Splatoon is looking fantastic, and can only get better as development continues. While the core experience feels a little shallow, I fully expect the main game to be much bigger and more fleshed out when it releases in 2015. Plus, I’ll always welcome fresh ideas that turn genres on their head, and Splatoon does just that. Challenging me to focus on shooting things other than the opponent? Sign me up!

Check out the game in action below and let us know if you’re excited by what you see!