ACBob's ZimZam - Blog

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The Splatoon Series! Or more accurately, Splatoon 2 on its Lone-some.

Splatoon 2, or what I'll call 'Splatoon' from here-on-out¹, is one of the latest video games that I've actually really enjoyed. This is an experience to rival what happened with Minecraft, where I got a taste of it and wanted to devour it like hot soup at a homeless shelter.

The way I got into it is even some-what reminiscent of Minecraft. A friend called me over to their computer (Nintendo Switch, in this case) and gave me a shot of the game. After one match, I wanted to continue playing it for as long as I could. Always trying to break through the limits of what they were letting me do with their device. Before long, I was wanting to own a copy myself.

With the game having been released in 2017, I was quite late to the party. Again, like Minecraft. By the time I got it, in 2020, the community had 3 years to develop, fester, and ferment. For better or worse. Luckily, it seems to be majoritorally better. A bit like-... I'm going to stop name dropping another game. This is Splatoon's time to shine.

Featuring many desirable qualities, all of them combining to make Splatoon such a great game. To list these qualities, naturally, would cause this blog to read like an Index, or some form of advertising campaign. - Not the effect I'm going for. To get an idea of what the game actually is; It's a competitive game that encompasses Single-player and Multi-player content. Despite this, most of this blog article is going to focus upon the Multiplayer aspect, as that's what I enjoy the most. Quite commonly the game's art-style comes up. Featuring bright colours, wacky designs, and Squids. The entire world coming from the Squids, helping to define the unique aspects of the art style². These are some really good pieces of design, coming from the great minds of Seita Inoue³ & Keisuke Nishimori.

Beyond the art-style is the gameplay. Arguably more important than design (although not personally.). The gameplay is both challenging and fun, a mixture a lot of games seem to fail at getting right. But Splatoon does it well. Really well.

The gameplay is even varied when it needs to be. Boasting a collection of game modes that'll challenge your abilities against the rest of the world. My favourite of these is Tower Control. It's very much like Payload in TF2, but with key differences, these differences combining to make an experience much unlike Payload. There are others, of-course. The worst of these being Splat zones.

The game has quite a bias as well. With a 2:8 Single player/Multiplayer game mode ratio. In any case, you can find a complete list of game modes here;

Although you'll find a more in-depth listing at a Wiki, Like this one. To help sell the game to you⁴, I'll give a quick summary of each. The game modes are listed in the same order as on the Wiki.

Turfwar

Is the game mode where you mark your territory with bodily fluids.

Splat zones

Is the game mode where you mark specifically highlighted areas of territory more than the other team.

Tower control

Is the payload game mode from TF2.

Rain maker

Is the game mode where you escort an experimental OP weapon, only stopped by its lack of ability to aim.

Salmon Run

Is the game mode where you become a corporate shill and kill people for your employer's egg addiction.

Clam blitz

Splat fest

Is turf war, but you do it for a global team.

The Single player content is just level-based missions, so I see no reason to touch upon them⁵. Again - my Personal favourite⁶ is Tower Control.

Although I say< that my first exposure to Splatoon was through a friend, I actually remember seeing the Demo for the first game appear on the Wii U's eshop. I downloaded it, and come the day... I forgot to play it. Since then, I'd always knew about the game, and it took until my friend showing it to me, for me to get into it.

And I suppose that's rather Poetic, actually. You don't know if a thing's any good until you try it. This is probably a good example of that phenomena, too. So, if this blog has any form of moral to it, it's that you should try anything you possibly can⁷.

This is an awful way to finish a Blog, isn't it...? Maybe the real blog was the friends we made along the way. Alright, I've finished writing it. I'm off to play some Splatoon. I hear it's Tower Control right now.

Veemo and Woomy! -Bob