Why the original Splatoon is squishy, obsolete fun
Splatoon (2015)
Splatoon (2015)
Confession time - I try to enjoy as many gaming genres as I can, being that I’m a bit of a gaming Renaissance man. Actually, from this point forward, you are probably better off referring to me as a patron of the arts. But I have to say that I’ve never been all that keen on shooters.
There weren’t an awful lot of them around in the early to mid 90s I suppose, which is where most of my collection comes from. And I never had a PC to play Doom on anyway, not until the millennium. Nowadays, you can’t move for the bloody things. And bloody things they are as well, because you don’t have to go too far to find a shooter where your best chance at success usually involves taking the head off somebody and leaving them a quivering, bloody wreck on the floor.
Yes, yes, it’s all make-believe and you see worse scenes down at your local TV emporium on Black Friday. I know that. But when a game allows you to take a non-lethal or stealthy way through things as well, rather than saying "after you, Rambo sir, by all means tear everyone up and start a massacre," then I do appreciate it.
That’s why I’ll defend Goldeneye on N64 and other stone-age shooters, but I'll scoff at the modern, blood-ridden stuff. “Oh, chav rubbish,” I’ll spit, just because anytime I do pick up a controller and try to win the war, I get bodied in very quick order. I’m not very good at shooters, as it turns out.
But I don’t think I can be alone in my rather non-masculine aversion to bloodsport. Otherwise, why do you think Fortnite and Overwatch got so popular? They’re not very visceral or violent at all. But then, I suppose that means kids out there can trick their ignorant parents into thinking they’re happy-clappy colourful games. It’s a tale as old as time, really.
And I couldn’t help but sit up and take notice when Nintendo announced Splatoon for the ailing Wii U. My interest was piqued for several reasons. First of all, a shooter from Nintendo? Whatever next? I know they had Duck Hunt, but come on. How on earth do you cross Nintendo with machine guns?
Perhaps a Doom mod where you take on hell-bound Waluigis could have worked. It could still work, in fact it’s probably what we need more than ever. But we were all a little taken aback by the announcement of Splatoon. Of course, there isn’t a hint of blood in this game, unless you count a squid’s ink as blood, which I for one don’t.
The overall objective in most game modes of Splatoon isn’t even to smoke as many fools as possible, either. Rather, you endeavour to excrete your own inky faeces all over the map, and ideally be more Bobby Sands-esque with your excrement than the other team. Only Nintendo could release a shooting game where you’re not really concerned with shooting your opponent at all, and you’d rather shake hands and make friends with them given the opportunity.
Oh, but what am I saying? Of course you can’t make friends online. This is a Nintendo game, and Nintendo regard online play as some sort of paedophile free-for-all, with swastikas and dick pics adorning every wall. I admit that the whole Xbox Live scene of dressing up in camo, using a tactical headset and screaming “Tango down! Go, go!” into the mic at other Gareth Keenans with armyman fantasies never really appealed to me.
If you’re going to give us a team-shooter though, Nintendo, then you need to let us act like a team. Of course, this game is aimed at children, so having a bearded creep like me coming online and telling little Timothy where to plant the ink bomb, and screaming blue murder at him when he gets it wrong, it wouldn’t really fly. Nor would it fly if I told him that I was going to come round his house and burn it down. I just want to win, you know?
There can be a hell of a lot of dialog to sift through when you turn on the game as well, which is an unfortunate Nintendo trend - Animal Crossing players will know what I’m on about here, with Isabelle’s daily diarrhoea coming at you. The problem here is that Nintendo have tried to make the characters of Splatoon “cool” and “urban”.
Now I love Nintendo, you know I do, but cool they are not. You can’t have Japanese boomers trying to be hip, for God’s sake, it’s just too embarrassing and cringey. Still, the alternative is Fortnite dances, so what's the cringier of the two?
And to be fair, I do like the designs of the Inkling characters, and it’s a great idea melting enemy calamaris with a giant paint roller. You’ll grow to hate that paint roller of course, but every online shooter needs an overpowered, cheap weapon - remember the noob tube in COD4?
So it’s you and three other mutes against, well, four other mutes. And if you're unfortunate enough to end up on a team with somebody who suffers from narcolepsy and has fallen asleep at the wheel, you’re down to three, and you can really forget all about it - it’s another 2 of your life minutes wasted. Not many suckers bought a Wii U either, which only added to the struggle of getting a game going.
That’s not the game’s fault of course, although what is the game’s fault is the complete absence of logic in matchmaking. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Level 1 greenhorn, going up against the biggest horns at Level 40 - you just get in the match and shut up, mate. Not that anyone could hear you if you complained anyway.
And not that any of it matters in any case, because the original Splatoon is old hat now, and the servers aren't around anymore; I suppose the spit dried up and the chewing gum gave out eventually. So that’s the main selling point of Splatoon held back ungraciously, like that particularly dumb kid we all had in our schools who changed razorblades more than he changed classes.
You’d like to think that there’s a decent single-player campaign to fall back on, Call of Duty style. No, sorry, I said decent didn’t I? I just mean, it’d be nice to have a few hours to put your gunman frustrations into. But the one-player mode is really, really boring here.
So it’s back to the multiplayer, and all of a sudden this octopus has run out of legs very quickly. Which brings us to the absolute worst aspect of these types of online shooters - they become redundant, basically useless products eventually, especially once the Splatoon games on Switch started coming out.
I’m a games hoarder, like I’m sure many of you are. I should by all rights throw out my copy of Ice Climber, the most useless of all articles. But I won't, because even thirty years later, I could still get some play out of it, if I really wanted.
You won’t get much at all out of Splatoon 1, especially not these days. I do give props to Nintendo for trying out something new, and it’s obviously worked for them - gamers love Splatoon, critics like it, and I won’t speak for the fan-artists but I think we both know what’s going on there.
You just need to remember the sad question asked of us by Toy Story - what happens to our toys after we’re finished with them? Now, I don’t advocate we do all sorts of grotesque experiments on the Splatoon disc, like Sid would have done. But you do eventually have to "take care" of your old junk. I don’t mind taking on that job, but I’d rather not do it by putting a bullet through its head. Splatoon was alright, and it doesn’t deserve a fate like that.
10 November 2023