This past Friday me and Lewis traveled to London to attend the Post E3 event. So over the next few days I will be posting a series of articles with my impressions of what I played.
First up we have Splatoon.
For anyone that doesn’t know the objective of this game is to cover as much ground (no points are scored for walls) in your teams colour as possible and the team with the most ground covered is the winner.
This was the first game we were invited to play. There was an eight Wii U consoles setup and the demo had a four-vs-four team deathmatch style structure which lasted two minutes. One of the more interesting ideas is even though you are working with three other players your individual performance is tracked and at the end of the round there is a ranking screen which shows each players point total for that round. So even if you are on the losing team you can still be the top player of that round.
The gameplay is very fast paced and does require quick reactions. The ability to turn into the squid form is a good alternative to a standard cover mechanic as you can’t be damaged while submerged in paint. There is a meter in the top-right corner that fills as you cover the ground in your teams colour and when its full you can push in the right stick and the standard gun you have turns into a rocket launcher type weapon that has a finite amount of time of usage, but can cover a lot of ground.
The colours in this game are really vibrant
The game performs well in both visuals and sounds, the game engine looks excellent and copes very well with the amount of action onscreen and opposing players explode with a burst of colour and a very satisfying pop sound.
The aiming is done with the GamePad gyro controls in the same vein as Ocarina of Time 3DS and feels just as responsive. On the GamePad screen is a map of the level and you can see how much is covered in your teams colour so you can see the areas that need your attention the most.
So that’s about it for Splatoon if you have any questions about the demo feel free to leave them in the comments.
