A Black Falcon
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Splatoon Review
Splatoon is an online multiplayer-focused third-person shooter developed and published by Nintendo in 2015 for the Nintendo Wii U. A big hit, at least for its relatively unsuccessful system, Splatoon still has an active online player base; I got the game last month, not too long after I finally, at long last, got a Wii U in April, and have almost never waited more than a minute or two for a match, and usually it is much less than that. Considering that the game is several years old and on the Wii U that is pretty impressive.
As for me, When I got this game I was hoping to like it, but I wasn't sure. While I have liked some of them here and there, I am far from a big fan of first or third person shooters. It's never been a favorite genre of mine, and my interest in online shooters is even lower; I played a few online shooters back in the late '90s to early '00s, but have never really been hooked to one like I was to Blizzard's RTSes, for example. Splatoon is supposed to be great, yes, but that doesn't mean I'd like it. Making things worse, while many popular games drop in price over time, this one hasn't really. I paid $40 for the game, and that was actually less than Gamestop charges for the game, for example. Nintendo has decided to keep their game prices high for most of their games, not dropping prices like other publishers do, and Splatoon is no exception -- $40, for a three year old game? Well, it better be good...
And it is! Splatoon, in both single and multi player modes, is a great and surprisingly addictive game. It takes the basic form of a shooter and changes things up with completely unique gameplay: Splatoon is all about painting the world. The game has a charmingly weird sense of style, as you play as humanoid squid-children who can switch back and forth between a squid form and a human form, and that affects the gameplay in some pretty cool ways, but the painting is Splatoon's most unique feature, and it is at the core of why I like this game so much. I love maps in games, and particularly ones which you fill in as you go. This game is all about quite literally filling in the map to win, and that is amazing.
Controls and Gameplay
Splatoon is, again, a shooter with a twist. You play as a form-shifting squid child called an Inkling armed with an ink weapon, and go around painting the world or 'splatting' other Inkling squid-children by covering them with ink. In all modes there are two sides, each of whom has a different ink color they use. It can be red and blue, orange and purple, or more. While the single player campaign is a solo affair, online multiplayer is a four-versus-four game exclusively, so this is largely a team game. That design works well, as I will explain later. The basic controls allow you to use your main weapon, use your sub-weapon and superweapon, move around, switch to squid form while you hold down a button, and jump. You can also aim several ways, as described below. Many weapons allow you to either fire normally, by holding down the trigger, or use the weapon an alternate way by tapping it. With rollers or brushes for instance, if you tap the trigger you splatter paint around, but if you hold the button you paint the ground. Other weapons charge instead, so the longer you hold the button the stronger the attack. It's quite varied. Each attack type is useful in different situations. You can only use one weapon at a time, which you choose from the main menu before entering a match. You use up ink as you use your main or secondary weapon, and an ink meter on screen shows how much ammo you have left.
As for that ink though, well, the game calls it ink to fit with the sea-life theme, but it's basically paint, except with a waterey twist. While in squid form you move more quickly and are nearly invisible within the ink, but both of those only work within your color of ink. Additionally, while in your color of ink in squid form your ink-tank ammo meter will refill, so you will need to switch back and forth to recharge. I like it better when shooters don't make you recharge, Doom-style, as it's annoying and frustrating to run out, but it does add some strategy to the game. Squid form may sound great, but you cannot attack while you are a squid, only when you are a kid, so you will probably spend most of your time as a humanoid. Squid form is mostly useful for refilling ammo, faster movement through the level through areas already inked or for when you want to try to hide from your opponents, then. Those functions are all key to this game though, and the balance between squid and kid, movement and attack, is very well thought through and is done just right. The wall and floor-painting-focused gameplay may be Splatoon's most unique feature, but the squid/humanoid dichotomy is nearly as important and it is just as unique. It's a key behind what makes this game so interesting and fun, as zooming around as a squid can be great fun, but you'll need to pop out sometime to ink the world or try to get your opponents... but can you do that safely? It's great design, both fun and challenging.
Now, there is one more element to Splatoon's controls that I need to cover in more detail, and that is aiming. There are two ways to look around in this game, either with the right analog stick on the Gamepad, or with tilt motion controls, as your view will move around as you move or tilt the gamepad. With motion controls on you can still use the right stick to change your view on a horizontal axis, but not a vertical one; that is motion-only. If you turn off motion controls then only the right stick controls you view. Some people like motion aiming and some do not, but I think it gives you much better and more precise control over your aim, particularly your vertical aim, than just an analog stick would. The motion controls are fantastic for looking up and down or a little bit to either side, and it's definitely the best way to do those things. It is great that they left the right stick enabled for horizontally turning the camera, though, because the stick is better for quickly rotating the camera. This is because the Gamepad is large and bulky, and turning all the way around to see behind you is not always feasible while sitting holding the thing. Despite that though, the motion control element to the game is great and works very well. I've found myself trying to aim by moving the gamepad around in other Wii U games that don't have support for this... heh.
Another important part of the game are your armaments, and there are many types of weapons available for online play. In single player you have only one main weapon, a basic machine gun style splatter gun, a couple of sub-weapons to choose from, and limited-use superweapons. You don't have options here, but works well for the kind of campaign they made. For online play however you can choose between many weapons, including sniper rifles, machine or Gatling guns, giant rollers, brushes, buckets, charge guns, splatter guns, and more; there is a wide variety, with something for everyone. Each weapon type feels quite different as well, so trying out a lot of them is rewarding. As I love inking the ground the rollers are definitely my favorite though, they are the best at thoroughly covering surfaces with ink. In addition to your main weapon the game also has many sub-abilities available. In single player you can select between three or so that you can purchase with points you collect in the levels, but in multiplayer each weapon has two preset sub-abilities. There are many weapons available, including similar weapons that only vary in which sub-weapons they come with, so you should be able to find a weapon with sub-abilities you like. The first kind of sub abilities include grenades of several types, sensors to detect where your opponents are, and more. These can be used at will, but use a lot of ink for each use. The second type of subweapon is a more powerful attack that takes time to charge. As you ink ground a meter fills up, and once you fill up the meter your super ability can be activated. Super abilities include waves of bombs you can throw out, giant ink-strikes that hit a point you target on the map, a Kraken mode where you turn into an invincible Kraken squid for a little while, leaving a trail of ink and hopefully opponents behind, and more.
When you get hit you take damage, though there isn't a damage meter. Instead, ink of the other sides' color starts filling up your screen. If this damage gets too bad your are splatted and you get sent back. How this works is different in single and multi player; in single player there are checkpoints you go back to, but in multiplayer you go back to your start point on that map. In multiplayer, you will also have to wait a few seconds after being splatted before you respawn and can start out again, so there is a penalty for being knocked out. Single player has a penalty as well, though I will discuss that later. Inklings cannot take much damage before they get splatted, so staying away from enemy attacks is important. The quick splats and respawns keep the game moving at a good pace, and for the most part the health system works well. Sometimes it can be hard to know how much damage you can take before you get splatted, though; it all varies depending on what your and your opponents' equipment and abilities are, so as the game does not display any damage numbers, much less have health bars, it can be vague sometimes. Still, again, the combat and pacing are done very well.
Additionally, unlike many games on the Wii U, Splatoon makes great use of the screen on the Wii U Gamepad, its main tablet-like controller with a large screen in it. Ingame in multiplayer games, the screen is used for an incredibly useful ingame minimap which doesn't only show you which areas each team has inked at the moment, critical information to have, but also allows you to super-jump straight to the location of any of your teammates anytime you want. This is usually marked with a circle on the ground, so astute enemies can wait for you to land and splat you, but when used right these jumps are a key to victory. Note that because of this you do need to use the Gamepad itself with this game in everything other than the single-system multiplayer mode, you cannot use a Wiimote or Wii U Pro Controller. That's fine though, that map display is great. As a result of this the game also doesn't have off-TV play support, unlike most games on this system, but with how central the second screen is to the game it is understandable. Unfortunate, but understandable.
All of that may sound interesting and unique, but perhaps the most impressive thing about Splatoon is how well it all comes together. This game has extremely responsive controls, unique gameplay that fits together incredibly well despite how different so many elements of the game are from genre norms, a great control scheme laid out just right on the Gamepad, good use of the Gamepad's second screen, a good sense of speed as you zoom around as a squid, satisfying action with a variety of weapons, lots of ground to have fun covering with ink, and so much more. Once you've played it a lot the game can get repetitive, as there is only so much to see, but it stays fun despite that.
Characters and Features
When you first start up Splatoon, you start by creating a squid character who you will play as in the game. You can customize your character, but the only options are your gender and skin color so customization is limited, though the games' many clothing options allow you to look more unique. Even so, it's great that they have those options at all, because Nintendo games usually have male-only protagonists and very, very rarely let you play as a non-white or light-skinned Asian character. This game is different. You can't name your player, though; instead, once ingame the name displayed is the name of whatever the Mii linked to your Nintendo account is. If you change which Mii is representing your account your Splatoon username will change along with it, so it is not set from the start, thankfully. This works, though it means that nobody has a set username you can actually look up. I presume that this was done as a part of Nintendo's near-paranoid efforts to hamstring their online services in the name of protecting children, as if you just reveal Nintendo account names online or something someone would have a much easier time finding someone than as it is, where it's just whatever Mii you are currently linking to it.
Anyway, with your character set you can start the game. The main menu is not just a list of options, but is a moderate-sized plaza that you can move around in. You will see other squid-kids there, representing other people who were in matches you competed in recently I believe, though it is not actually an online space. Here you can walk to the various places on the map, or, much more conveniently, you can just touch those points on the on-screen minimap on the Wii U's Gamepad screen. This use of the Gamepad screen continues ingame, as described above, and it's great. Thanks to the quick links on the pad there isn't much reason to wander around the plaza, unless you want to find some person you fought recently and buy a copy of an item they have equipped, but it can be fun anyway.
The places you can go include entrances for the Single Player or Multiplayer areas; a guy who will sell you clothing items you see on people on the plaza, for a high price; a minigame area where you can play the Squid Jump 8-bit-style minigame; and entrances to the shops that sell equipment. The equipment items that you can buy come in four varieties: weapons, shirts, shoes, and headgear, and a different shop sells each type. Oddly, you cannot change your pants; all Splatoon kids wear regulation black shorts, no other options are available. That's odd, considering how different everything else can look, but I guess it works. I think the sequel will have more options though, and that's nice.
Now, equipment is not only visual. Each weapon, shirt, head, or foot gear item has several attached enhancements, between two and four each. More expensive ones are more likely to have four, as you might expect. When you buy an item from one of the stores you won't know what its enhancements are, either; they unlock after you use that item for a while. Item enhancements in the game include ones which increase your attack power, hide the bubbles that usually give away your location when in ink as a squid (but with a penalty), decrease ink usage, speed up ink recharge time, and more. Which you get will depend on the luck of the draw, so this is another random element in the game. These modifiers only slightly alter your stats but they do matter, so you need to consider function as well as form when you choose what to wear.
Minigame: Squid Jump
Either from the main plaza or while waiting for a multiplayer game, you can play a simple little minigame with 2d, NES-style graphics called Squid Jump. In this game you play as a squid, and have to try to get to the top of what I believe is an infinite number of stages. Making things tricky, you cannot move left and right on a platform; instead, all you can do is jump, and adjust your trajectory in the air by tilting the Gamepad left or right. You also can alter your jump height based on how long you hold the jump button down for before you release it. That's it for the controls, though. The game plays well, but because you cannot move around while on a platform, you need to plan your jumps carefully. Don't go too slow, though, because the water is slowly rising behind you, and you need to jump to the top of each stage to escape! It's a fun little minigame to play while waiting, and the game keeps track of your best score.
Modes: The Basics
While there are a few other things to do in this game, most of your time playing will be in the two main modes, either the single player campaign or online multiplayer. The single player story mode is short, estimated at five hours at most, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts. It's an only moderately challenging campaign that both goes through a story and prepares the player for some of the basics of the main multiplayer game. In the multiplayer menu, you choose between four options: Turf War, Ranked, or Team versions of each of those two modes. Turf War is the main mode, where you ink terrain. There are three modes in Ranked, though, which the game will switch between day to day; more on that later. I've never tried the Team modes, but while more options would be great, having only two main player lists admittedly does help keep the player base up, and it is still very easy to find a game.
While there are only maybe ten multiplayer maps and a couple of modes, Splatoon does several things to keep you playing online. First, there are two ranking systems in multiplayer, a level-based one that only increases until you reach a cap of 50, and a ranking-based one for the Ranked mode only which will go up or down depending on your performance in that mode. The ranking system can be frustrating as you need consistent wins to advance and it is never clear why you gain or lose as many points as you do, but it works. The game does one more thing on top of those to keep you coming back, though, and for me at least it's more controversial.
That is, multiplayer-mode Splatoon locks what you can access each day. This is one of the games' defining elements, and it is both good and bad. At any given time, you can only play two maps in Turf War, and only two maps in Ranked, both locked to one of the three Ranked modes. Every time you turn on the game, or when the rotation changes, teen Inkling idol hosts Callie and Marie introduce the four maps currently in rotation and give some jokes about each one. That's amusing, but do you want to play a different map or Ranked mode? Sorry, you can't, you'll need to come back later to do that. Similarly, the shirt, shoe, and headgear shops only display five items per day. If you want something else you don't have, come back tomorrow to see the new random selection of five items each. You can, however, buy any weapon that you have unlocked at any time; that's nice at least, and I wish the other shops worked similarly. Put together these limitations do a great job of encouraging longer-term repeat play, for a shorter session per day, and that is probably the intent. However, I really dislike that you are locked out of so much of the game at any time. When I want to play but am stuck with only some of the least interesting maps available and the least-good Ranked mode, it encourages you to just stop playing for now and that wouldn't be a problem most shooters have since most have more options than this. But on the other hand it keeps you playing and focuses everyone on only two multiplayer queues, helping make it easier to find a game, so it's not all bad. Overall though, the time-based limitations work, but I wish they'd been a bit less restrictive.
But anyway, on to more detail about the modes, single player first.
Modes: Single Player - Hero Mode
I covered many of the important details about single player earlier, but I should sum it up here. Single player mode in Splatoon mostly plays and controls similarly to multiplayer, but in a very different game structure. Here levels are mostly linear instead of being open areas, they have almost as many platforming elements as shooting, you are following a story, and the game has a traditional level-and-boss structure, to name the most important differences. Your armaments differ as well, as again you have only one main weapon here, a machine-gun type weapon. You also have only three sub-weapons available, and can choose between them once you buy them. Superweapons are even more restricted, as you cannot just normally equip them; instead they drop as one-time-use powerups in boxes in the levels, so you can only use superweapons when the game allows it. This works well for the kind of game they have made, as limiting their use helps with the difficulty balance I am sure. I never really missed them, your main gun and squid and jumping abilities are usually all you need.
The single player mode's story is simple, but it's good enough. The Inkling squids' enemies, the Octolings, have attacked and taken some creatures that provide power to the squids' city, and you need to stop the villains and get back the electric-bulb things they stole. There is one at the end of each level. That sounds basic, but the writing is amusing and the conversations during this short campaign are fun stuff. Anyway, 'save the day from the bad guys' is all the plot most games need, and it's fine here. The humor is decent, and there is some good, interesting backstory in the hidden collectibles in the stages (details below).
The single player game is accessed from the main plaza, and has its own overworld map to explore. The campaign consists of five areas, with five levels and a boss in each one. The overworld map has no enemies on it, but there is something to do, as you need to actually find the levels. Levels are marked with hatches, but they do not appear until you ink the area, so you'll explore around each area, inking everything you can find until you uncover the locations of the stages. You can play the levels in each world in any order, an can quick-warp to any stage by touching it on the minimap on the Gamepad, but you do have to beat all of the levels in an area before you can face that worlds' boss, and must beat each boss to move on to the next area. The game was never hard enough to make me want to give up on a stage and go try a different one instead, but still this is a nice idea and it does work. The game has a decent difficulty curve as you go along and while mostly easy, it does get tougher later on.
Splatoon is an online multiplayer-focused third-person shooter developed and published by Nintendo in 2015 for the Nintendo Wii U. A big hit, at least for its relatively unsuccessful system, Splatoon still has an active online player base; I got the game last month, not too long after I finally, at long last, got a Wii U in April, and have almost never waited more than a minute or two for a match, and usually it is much less than that. Considering that the game is several years old and on the Wii U that is pretty impressive.
As for me, When I got this game I was hoping to like it, but I wasn't sure. While I have liked some of them here and there, I am far from a big fan of first or third person shooters. It's never been a favorite genre of mine, and my interest in online shooters is even lower; I played a few online shooters back in the late '90s to early '00s, but have never really been hooked to one like I was to Blizzard's RTSes, for example. Splatoon is supposed to be great, yes, but that doesn't mean I'd like it. Making things worse, while many popular games drop in price over time, this one hasn't really. I paid $40 for the game, and that was actually less than Gamestop charges for the game, for example. Nintendo has decided to keep their game prices high for most of their games, not dropping prices like other publishers do, and Splatoon is no exception -- $40, for a three year old game? Well, it better be good...
And it is! Splatoon, in both single and multi player modes, is a great and surprisingly addictive game. It takes the basic form of a shooter and changes things up with completely unique gameplay: Splatoon is all about painting the world. The game has a charmingly weird sense of style, as you play as humanoid squid-children who can switch back and forth between a squid form and a human form, and that affects the gameplay in some pretty cool ways, but the painting is Splatoon's most unique feature, and it is at the core of why I like this game so much. I love maps in games, and particularly ones which you fill in as you go. This game is all about quite literally filling in the map to win, and that is amazing.
Controls and Gameplay
Splatoon is, again, a shooter with a twist. You play as a form-shifting squid child called an Inkling armed with an ink weapon, and go around painting the world or 'splatting' other Inkling squid-children by covering them with ink. In all modes there are two sides, each of whom has a different ink color they use. It can be red and blue, orange and purple, or more. While the single player campaign is a solo affair, online multiplayer is a four-versus-four game exclusively, so this is largely a team game. That design works well, as I will explain later. The basic controls allow you to use your main weapon, use your sub-weapon and superweapon, move around, switch to squid form while you hold down a button, and jump. You can also aim several ways, as described below. Many weapons allow you to either fire normally, by holding down the trigger, or use the weapon an alternate way by tapping it. With rollers or brushes for instance, if you tap the trigger you splatter paint around, but if you hold the button you paint the ground. Other weapons charge instead, so the longer you hold the button the stronger the attack. It's quite varied. Each attack type is useful in different situations. You can only use one weapon at a time, which you choose from the main menu before entering a match. You use up ink as you use your main or secondary weapon, and an ink meter on screen shows how much ammo you have left.
As for that ink though, well, the game calls it ink to fit with the sea-life theme, but it's basically paint, except with a waterey twist. While in squid form you move more quickly and are nearly invisible within the ink, but both of those only work within your color of ink. Additionally, while in your color of ink in squid form your ink-tank ammo meter will refill, so you will need to switch back and forth to recharge. I like it better when shooters don't make you recharge, Doom-style, as it's annoying and frustrating to run out, but it does add some strategy to the game. Squid form may sound great, but you cannot attack while you are a squid, only when you are a kid, so you will probably spend most of your time as a humanoid. Squid form is mostly useful for refilling ammo, faster movement through the level through areas already inked or for when you want to try to hide from your opponents, then. Those functions are all key to this game though, and the balance between squid and kid, movement and attack, is very well thought through and is done just right. The wall and floor-painting-focused gameplay may be Splatoon's most unique feature, but the squid/humanoid dichotomy is nearly as important and it is just as unique. It's a key behind what makes this game so interesting and fun, as zooming around as a squid can be great fun, but you'll need to pop out sometime to ink the world or try to get your opponents... but can you do that safely? It's great design, both fun and challenging.
Now, there is one more element to Splatoon's controls that I need to cover in more detail, and that is aiming. There are two ways to look around in this game, either with the right analog stick on the Gamepad, or with tilt motion controls, as your view will move around as you move or tilt the gamepad. With motion controls on you can still use the right stick to change your view on a horizontal axis, but not a vertical one; that is motion-only. If you turn off motion controls then only the right stick controls you view. Some people like motion aiming and some do not, but I think it gives you much better and more precise control over your aim, particularly your vertical aim, than just an analog stick would. The motion controls are fantastic for looking up and down or a little bit to either side, and it's definitely the best way to do those things. It is great that they left the right stick enabled for horizontally turning the camera, though, because the stick is better for quickly rotating the camera. This is because the Gamepad is large and bulky, and turning all the way around to see behind you is not always feasible while sitting holding the thing. Despite that though, the motion control element to the game is great and works very well. I've found myself trying to aim by moving the gamepad around in other Wii U games that don't have support for this... heh.
Another important part of the game are your armaments, and there are many types of weapons available for online play. In single player you have only one main weapon, a basic machine gun style splatter gun, a couple of sub-weapons to choose from, and limited-use superweapons. You don't have options here, but works well for the kind of campaign they made. For online play however you can choose between many weapons, including sniper rifles, machine or Gatling guns, giant rollers, brushes, buckets, charge guns, splatter guns, and more; there is a wide variety, with something for everyone. Each weapon type feels quite different as well, so trying out a lot of them is rewarding. As I love inking the ground the rollers are definitely my favorite though, they are the best at thoroughly covering surfaces with ink. In addition to your main weapon the game also has many sub-abilities available. In single player you can select between three or so that you can purchase with points you collect in the levels, but in multiplayer each weapon has two preset sub-abilities. There are many weapons available, including similar weapons that only vary in which sub-weapons they come with, so you should be able to find a weapon with sub-abilities you like. The first kind of sub abilities include grenades of several types, sensors to detect where your opponents are, and more. These can be used at will, but use a lot of ink for each use. The second type of subweapon is a more powerful attack that takes time to charge. As you ink ground a meter fills up, and once you fill up the meter your super ability can be activated. Super abilities include waves of bombs you can throw out, giant ink-strikes that hit a point you target on the map, a Kraken mode where you turn into an invincible Kraken squid for a little while, leaving a trail of ink and hopefully opponents behind, and more.
When you get hit you take damage, though there isn't a damage meter. Instead, ink of the other sides' color starts filling up your screen. If this damage gets too bad your are splatted and you get sent back. How this works is different in single and multi player; in single player there are checkpoints you go back to, but in multiplayer you go back to your start point on that map. In multiplayer, you will also have to wait a few seconds after being splatted before you respawn and can start out again, so there is a penalty for being knocked out. Single player has a penalty as well, though I will discuss that later. Inklings cannot take much damage before they get splatted, so staying away from enemy attacks is important. The quick splats and respawns keep the game moving at a good pace, and for the most part the health system works well. Sometimes it can be hard to know how much damage you can take before you get splatted, though; it all varies depending on what your and your opponents' equipment and abilities are, so as the game does not display any damage numbers, much less have health bars, it can be vague sometimes. Still, again, the combat and pacing are done very well.
Additionally, unlike many games on the Wii U, Splatoon makes great use of the screen on the Wii U Gamepad, its main tablet-like controller with a large screen in it. Ingame in multiplayer games, the screen is used for an incredibly useful ingame minimap which doesn't only show you which areas each team has inked at the moment, critical information to have, but also allows you to super-jump straight to the location of any of your teammates anytime you want. This is usually marked with a circle on the ground, so astute enemies can wait for you to land and splat you, but when used right these jumps are a key to victory. Note that because of this you do need to use the Gamepad itself with this game in everything other than the single-system multiplayer mode, you cannot use a Wiimote or Wii U Pro Controller. That's fine though, that map display is great. As a result of this the game also doesn't have off-TV play support, unlike most games on this system, but with how central the second screen is to the game it is understandable. Unfortunate, but understandable.
All of that may sound interesting and unique, but perhaps the most impressive thing about Splatoon is how well it all comes together. This game has extremely responsive controls, unique gameplay that fits together incredibly well despite how different so many elements of the game are from genre norms, a great control scheme laid out just right on the Gamepad, good use of the Gamepad's second screen, a good sense of speed as you zoom around as a squid, satisfying action with a variety of weapons, lots of ground to have fun covering with ink, and so much more. Once you've played it a lot the game can get repetitive, as there is only so much to see, but it stays fun despite that.
Characters and Features
When you first start up Splatoon, you start by creating a squid character who you will play as in the game. You can customize your character, but the only options are your gender and skin color so customization is limited, though the games' many clothing options allow you to look more unique. Even so, it's great that they have those options at all, because Nintendo games usually have male-only protagonists and very, very rarely let you play as a non-white or light-skinned Asian character. This game is different. You can't name your player, though; instead, once ingame the name displayed is the name of whatever the Mii linked to your Nintendo account is. If you change which Mii is representing your account your Splatoon username will change along with it, so it is not set from the start, thankfully. This works, though it means that nobody has a set username you can actually look up. I presume that this was done as a part of Nintendo's near-paranoid efforts to hamstring their online services in the name of protecting children, as if you just reveal Nintendo account names online or something someone would have a much easier time finding someone than as it is, where it's just whatever Mii you are currently linking to it.
Anyway, with your character set you can start the game. The main menu is not just a list of options, but is a moderate-sized plaza that you can move around in. You will see other squid-kids there, representing other people who were in matches you competed in recently I believe, though it is not actually an online space. Here you can walk to the various places on the map, or, much more conveniently, you can just touch those points on the on-screen minimap on the Wii U's Gamepad screen. This use of the Gamepad screen continues ingame, as described above, and it's great. Thanks to the quick links on the pad there isn't much reason to wander around the plaza, unless you want to find some person you fought recently and buy a copy of an item they have equipped, but it can be fun anyway.
The places you can go include entrances for the Single Player or Multiplayer areas; a guy who will sell you clothing items you see on people on the plaza, for a high price; a minigame area where you can play the Squid Jump 8-bit-style minigame; and entrances to the shops that sell equipment. The equipment items that you can buy come in four varieties: weapons, shirts, shoes, and headgear, and a different shop sells each type. Oddly, you cannot change your pants; all Splatoon kids wear regulation black shorts, no other options are available. That's odd, considering how different everything else can look, but I guess it works. I think the sequel will have more options though, and that's nice.
Now, equipment is not only visual. Each weapon, shirt, head, or foot gear item has several attached enhancements, between two and four each. More expensive ones are more likely to have four, as you might expect. When you buy an item from one of the stores you won't know what its enhancements are, either; they unlock after you use that item for a while. Item enhancements in the game include ones which increase your attack power, hide the bubbles that usually give away your location when in ink as a squid (but with a penalty), decrease ink usage, speed up ink recharge time, and more. Which you get will depend on the luck of the draw, so this is another random element in the game. These modifiers only slightly alter your stats but they do matter, so you need to consider function as well as form when you choose what to wear.
Minigame: Squid Jump
Either from the main plaza or while waiting for a multiplayer game, you can play a simple little minigame with 2d, NES-style graphics called Squid Jump. In this game you play as a squid, and have to try to get to the top of what I believe is an infinite number of stages. Making things tricky, you cannot move left and right on a platform; instead, all you can do is jump, and adjust your trajectory in the air by tilting the Gamepad left or right. You also can alter your jump height based on how long you hold the jump button down for before you release it. That's it for the controls, though. The game plays well, but because you cannot move around while on a platform, you need to plan your jumps carefully. Don't go too slow, though, because the water is slowly rising behind you, and you need to jump to the top of each stage to escape! It's a fun little minigame to play while waiting, and the game keeps track of your best score.
Modes: The Basics
While there are a few other things to do in this game, most of your time playing will be in the two main modes, either the single player campaign or online multiplayer. The single player story mode is short, estimated at five hours at most, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts. It's an only moderately challenging campaign that both goes through a story and prepares the player for some of the basics of the main multiplayer game. In the multiplayer menu, you choose between four options: Turf War, Ranked, or Team versions of each of those two modes. Turf War is the main mode, where you ink terrain. There are three modes in Ranked, though, which the game will switch between day to day; more on that later. I've never tried the Team modes, but while more options would be great, having only two main player lists admittedly does help keep the player base up, and it is still very easy to find a game.
While there are only maybe ten multiplayer maps and a couple of modes, Splatoon does several things to keep you playing online. First, there are two ranking systems in multiplayer, a level-based one that only increases until you reach a cap of 50, and a ranking-based one for the Ranked mode only which will go up or down depending on your performance in that mode. The ranking system can be frustrating as you need consistent wins to advance and it is never clear why you gain or lose as many points as you do, but it works. The game does one more thing on top of those to keep you coming back, though, and for me at least it's more controversial.
That is, multiplayer-mode Splatoon locks what you can access each day. This is one of the games' defining elements, and it is both good and bad. At any given time, you can only play two maps in Turf War, and only two maps in Ranked, both locked to one of the three Ranked modes. Every time you turn on the game, or when the rotation changes, teen Inkling idol hosts Callie and Marie introduce the four maps currently in rotation and give some jokes about each one. That's amusing, but do you want to play a different map or Ranked mode? Sorry, you can't, you'll need to come back later to do that. Similarly, the shirt, shoe, and headgear shops only display five items per day. If you want something else you don't have, come back tomorrow to see the new random selection of five items each. You can, however, buy any weapon that you have unlocked at any time; that's nice at least, and I wish the other shops worked similarly. Put together these limitations do a great job of encouraging longer-term repeat play, for a shorter session per day, and that is probably the intent. However, I really dislike that you are locked out of so much of the game at any time. When I want to play but am stuck with only some of the least interesting maps available and the least-good Ranked mode, it encourages you to just stop playing for now and that wouldn't be a problem most shooters have since most have more options than this. But on the other hand it keeps you playing and focuses everyone on only two multiplayer queues, helping make it easier to find a game, so it's not all bad. Overall though, the time-based limitations work, but I wish they'd been a bit less restrictive.
But anyway, on to more detail about the modes, single player first.
Modes: Single Player - Hero Mode
I covered many of the important details about single player earlier, but I should sum it up here. Single player mode in Splatoon mostly plays and controls similarly to multiplayer, but in a very different game structure. Here levels are mostly linear instead of being open areas, they have almost as many platforming elements as shooting, you are following a story, and the game has a traditional level-and-boss structure, to name the most important differences. Your armaments differ as well, as again you have only one main weapon here, a machine-gun type weapon. You also have only three sub-weapons available, and can choose between them once you buy them. Superweapons are even more restricted, as you cannot just normally equip them; instead they drop as one-time-use powerups in boxes in the levels, so you can only use superweapons when the game allows it. This works well for the kind of game they have made, as limiting their use helps with the difficulty balance I am sure. I never really missed them, your main gun and squid and jumping abilities are usually all you need.
The single player mode's story is simple, but it's good enough. The Inkling squids' enemies, the Octolings, have attacked and taken some creatures that provide power to the squids' city, and you need to stop the villains and get back the electric-bulb things they stole. There is one at the end of each level. That sounds basic, but the writing is amusing and the conversations during this short campaign are fun stuff. Anyway, 'save the day from the bad guys' is all the plot most games need, and it's fine here. The humor is decent, and there is some good, interesting backstory in the hidden collectibles in the stages (details below).
The single player game is accessed from the main plaza, and has its own overworld map to explore. The campaign consists of five areas, with five levels and a boss in each one. The overworld map has no enemies on it, but there is something to do, as you need to actually find the levels. Levels are marked with hatches, but they do not appear until you ink the area, so you'll explore around each area, inking everything you can find until you uncover the locations of the stages. You can play the levels in each world in any order, an can quick-warp to any stage by touching it on the minimap on the Gamepad, but you do have to beat all of the levels in an area before you can face that worlds' boss, and must beat each boss to move on to the next area. The game was never hard enough to make me want to give up on a stage and go try a different one instead, but still this is a nice idea and it does work. The game has a decent difficulty curve as you go along and while mostly easy, it does get tougher later on.