Hello, and welcome back the second edition of 'Is It Worth It?', an article series where I tell you if a game is worth the money and the time or not. Today's article will be about a game released in 2015 for the Wii U called Splatoon. The review will be divided into four parts; story, music, game design, and gameplay! Without further ado, let's super jump on in!
Story: Let me be very clear in saying that there is very little story to Splatoon. Since Splatoon is a very multiplayer based game, the single player game is very basic, but fun in the process. The story of Splatoon takes place thousands of years after humanity has died off. Two different races of creatures, the Inklings, and the Octarians, have come to war after years of peace. The Octarians have stolen the main source of the Inklings electricity, and it's the Inkling's job to get it back. You as a secret agent to the Inklings will take part in the time-honored tradition of Turf Wars with the Octarians (using paint to "splat" (destroy) the enemy teams). That's all the story has to offer. However, there are a bit more inklings (get it?) of information in the form of hidden scrolls throughout the single player levels. You also need to pass through some of the single player levels to unlock some of the guns and other weapons to use in multiplayer, so if you bought the game expecting to have everything unlocked, then you'll have a lot of work you'll need to put in.
Music: The music in Splatoon is very...different, to say the least. Nintendo definitely put a lot of work into making a detailed language for both the Inklings and Octarians to use in the songs. Because of this, many of the game's main tracks have vocals in them that you'll never find out the meaning to. However, this definitely doesn't stop the music from being catchy at all! I found myself really looking forward to seeing what battle theme would play during my online segments. There is a downside to this, though, in the sense that there isn't a very diverse soundtrack, leading to some songs playing over and over again and thereby becoming repetitive and obnoxious.
Gameplay: Splatoon is a hard game to get used to in two ways. One is the control scheme. I personally recommend playing the game with the Wii U Gamepad. While motion controls generally scare people away from games, the motion controls in Splatoon is actually one of the things that work the best. Using any kind of analog controller feels very awkward and slow, and with very slow sensitivity settings, it takes a while to get used to. It's also a hard game to get used to in terms of gameplay itself. Becoming good with whatever weapon class you choose to use can take a while, and can make the game feel a little too hard at first. However, once you're used to the weapon, it makes the game feel amazing, along with that ecstatic feeling of splatting a member of the enemy team.
Game Design: In terms of single player levels, Splatoon is extremely well designed. Nothing feels unfair when it comes to enemy placement. You have to plan out an entrance and exit strategy. If you go in guns blazing, you're most likely going to be splatted. The main problem in design comes with multiplayer. If you're playing local online, the game usually attempts to put you with a team of players that are on your current skill level based on ranking. The game also attempts to put you against a team that matches the average of your team's skill level as well. I'd like to put an emphasis on the word attempt. The game usually fails at doing this, sometimes putting a player at level one in the same room against a player at level fifty, leading to very unfair situations in terms of skill and weapon class. Some stages also have tiny choke points that the enemy can use to stay in one place and take out the enemy team from there, which also leads to some unfair situations. I'd like to say that these problems will be fixed with patches, but time will have to tell.
All in all, Splatoon is a very fun game and is definitely worth the buy. Once you get past the clunkiness of the controls and get some time to spend becoming good enough to hold your own against some more experienced characters, the game will become ten times more fun. I hope this review as able to shine some lights on Splatoon, and I hope that you find the game just as fun as I do! See you all next time!
