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It's probably worth making a Splatoon thread at this point.

 

It sure is!

 

So this is the best thing Nintendo's done in a long, long time. As someone who normally never plays shooters, I'm strangely really good at this? I played a dozen or so matches, only lost once or twice, and was pretty consistently the MVP despite usually being the lowest-level player. Neat.

 

NNID: UnitNumberFive

in-game name: teg

(19.2% Sno? You can do better than that)

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Not only 19.2%, but he's also 7 minutes late to pull the thread-creation trigger!

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Dammit Teg! Argh! I guess one of our threads will have to die, probably mine since yours has a punny title.

 

 

Does this deserve a topic? I think this deserves a topic, it's kind of overwhelmed the Wii U thread. (This generally seems to be the start of that conversation, if anybody wants to go back to it.)

 

I think i've settled on the aerospray mg as my preferred weapon of the moment. The homing grenade is a good tool for rushing two opponents at once, killing one with the grenade and using the remaining ink to normally finish off the other, or forcing one into a distracted posture that's easier to catch off guard. The main weapon has massive paint coverage and rapid enough damage that rollers are easily defeated before they can get close, and i've been using the ink bazooka super as kind of an anti-sniper tool, attacking people who are just kind of hanging back up on ledges. (Since it fires a tall projectile that breaks apart and continues on whenever part of it impacts against a surface, the highest part of the projectile easily continues up over ledges. On the other hand, since it kind of only fires straight ahead, it's complete garbage for hitting enemies below you.)

 

There, now we don't need mine.

 

 


(19.2% Sno? You can do better than that)

 

I don't know what you're talking about. You joined a game i was in, right? Is this about that? I got DC'd in the middle of that. I've had some connection issues today, seems like.

 

Also, i'm going to say, this game has a big problem with idlers. It seems to happen almost once every five games, and i've even had games where two people on my team are idling.

Unless the two things are related. When people drop, do they still look like they're in the game? I've had matches where i'm definitely an actual man down, 3 against 4.

 

 

I played a dozen or so matches, only lost once or twice, and was pretty consistently the MVP despite usually being the lowest-level player. Neat.

 

The matchmaking is probably still normalizing for you, i would suppose? I had probably like 12/13 wins in a row before i lost my first match online.

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I feel that I need this game. My Twitter feed is covered with it. Painted with it even.

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I don't know what you're talking about. You joined a game i was in, right? Is this about that? I got DC'd in the middle of that. I've had some connection issues today, seems like.

 

Aw, boo. Here I was all excited that my team beat yours nearly 4:1 in ink coverage.

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To be fair, i was probably going to lose that game anyways based on the minute or two i had with it, but i definitely got DC'd.

 

Also, I just realized something neat: On the playlist screen, hit Y and you can choose to wander around empty instances of the maps available in current rotation. That's a cool way to let people familiarize themselves with the maps.

 

Also also: When you win a string of matches, you'll notice a small rating bar fill up on the matchmaking screen. You can cash that in with Judd for extra currency, it turns out. (The cat, Judd is the cat.) It resets if you ignore it for too long, so don't. (It seems to persist for as long as the game is running, as far as i can tell.)

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I've played this a bit, I like it! I've level 6 in multiplayer, and just beat the second boss in the single player.

 

NNID: danueb (I'm Dan in game)

 

I'm surprisingly not the worst at this game, and by that I ONLY mean not the worst.

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This will sound a bit exaggerated, but the first impressions I got from playing the first section of Splatoon's singleplayer are the best possible. It's simply the best shooter I played in recent memory and the definitely the most inovative. 

 

It's awesome how Nintendo managed to unite shooting with traversal/platforming and cover mechanics, since you need to paint the floor to dash and jump through places, and you can also can hide in the paint to avoid enemy fire. I don't remember seeing any other game doing that - actually, Portal did that, but it was a puzzle, not a shooter. It really feels like a cohesive and solid mechanic, instead of a shooter trying to implement platforming in a clumsy way.

 

The enemy variety is great so far, I like the specifics ways to deal with each enemy type, and those doesn't involve headshots or common stuff that we see in shooters.

 

The multiplayer is great as well, I did great at the first matches, you really need to focus on painting more ground, killing other squids is just incidental, can't be your priority. It's really fun, but I though it was a bit lackluster when compared to the single-player. Maybe Nintendo will release more game mods and maps that add more interesting stuff. 

 

Splatoon is truly fantastic, it's so refreshing and unique, it doesn't feel like anything I played before even if it's core mechanics are based in familiar genres. I'm blown away by this.

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I'll correct you on one point, hiding in the ink doesn't actually seem to really affect your hitbox, it still seems to sprout upright from the spot you're hiding in just as if you were standing. You're just largely hidden and much more mobile. (I really like the dynamic this creates in multiplayer, flailing paint around a target to cut off their escape avenues and flanking opportunities to pin them down.)

 

I touched on it in the Wii U thread, and it's continued to stand out to me the more i've played the multiplayer: My impression of Splatoon is that it's a game that takes the "fighting for ground"  map control dynamics of other competitive games and makes it explicit and literal.

 

Splatoon gives you incredibly broad and powerful traversal mechanics, but they're reined in by the fact that they only work on ground on you control. It's, for example, the most explicit and easily understood form of needing to control the rocket spawns and any advantageous sightlines in a Halo map. Simultaneously, it's also a really elegant solution for implementing consistent frontlines that ebb and flow throughout the match, much more so than games that have you simply fighting through a chain of map nodes.

 

It's sort of terrific.

I've seen "paint the ground" mechanics like this in other games, but it's never really coalesced into something special like i think this has.

 

It's not a perfect game, there's a lot of things i think i'll probably come to nitpick more and more, but i really do think there is just such a solid foundation there and i hope Nintendo is rewarded for taking a chance on this game.

 

Edit: I'm also going to add in that i think their implementation of motion control here is probably one of the best uses of motion control that i've seen out of Nintendo, it's such a measured and discerning application of the strengths of motion control being used almost seamlessly in conjunction with a familiar dual analog control scheme. It took like a solid day of constantly reminding myself to use the motion control to fine tune my aim, only using the stick to turn wide distances, and it just feels so good and natural now. It offers a combination of both responsiveness and precision to a degree that is wildly unfamiliar in a console shooter. Did the game need this weird ass control scheme? Probably not, it probably could have worked just as well with any number of other alternatives, but it is nevertheless there, and it's kind of great.

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For anyone like me who's interested in trying the two-player local multiplayer but thinks it would be unfair for only one person to be able to use the combination motion control and sticks that the gamepad does, if you go into controller selection and hold down on the d-pad, then hold down B, and then press ZL and ZR, you can unlock... this.

 

GKwsPdD.jpg

 

 

I am dead serious.

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It feels like Nintendo probably dropped the ball on how few rollers are available until deep into the progression. At level 14, while i have tons of snipes and machine guns, i still only have access to two rollers. (I also only have two blasters, but nobody uses the blasters. Seriously, how many of you even realized there was a fourth category of main weapons?)

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ive tried every weapon style and keep coming back to the blasters.  the varied grenade types also is spectacular, although i'd like better options for combining a weapon, specific grenade, and special ability.  

 

maybe im a scrub, but skate park is my least favorite.  the "bowls" make it really hard to assault, and a better positioned player can usually mow you down.  also makes lobbed grenades difficult to even clear the cusps

 

 

Warehouse on the other hand is a jam.  i love the symmetry and side access with the grate-inkling drop.  those games usually end up with a mad fight in the middle or some backdoor moves to try and cover up the last 1/3rd of the other team to compensate for a sacked middle

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Skatepark sucked for me, until I got a sniper I felt comfortable with, and now I'm wrecking everything from the the top of the tower. If I had someone with a shorter range weapon covering the base of the tower, we would be near untouchable, save for some specials. I feel like this map heavily favours rollers, who can quickly cover the wide area, and chargers who can control the space from the tower (and from the tower, you can even see all the way to the enemy spawn point). 

 

Anyway, good idea making this thread; the Wii U thread got way too overpopulated with Splatoon talk. 

 

Edit: also, Teg I jumped in a few matches with you last night, you did pretty good! 

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I love the sucker bomb! I've baited so many people into its explosion.

Also, Ninja squid perk is the best perk. You can just swim behind props in the middle of an ink fight and just shoot them in the back.

Also, the sniper rifle is too hard. I suck with it.

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Yeah, I'm totally getting this tomorrow. I was completely in love after Danielle and Patricia's stream.

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I feel that I need this game. My Twitter feed is covered with it. Painted with it even.

 

Yes please. You also need to get Sean hooked on it, so he can get all super competitive about it. Then next podcast is the Idle Thumbs Splat-Cast, all about Splatoon. Ok? Good!

 

Also, yeah echoing everyone elses feelings about this, this is fantastic! I'm really digging the multiplayer. It's seems highly competitive but in an inviting way. I don't feel like I immediately don't belong here, like I do with some other multiplayer games.

 

I *love* that there's no voice chat. I would just disable it, but it's nice to play a multiplayer game that's tuned to not having voice chat, instead of disabling it and feeling like you're not playing it right.

 

I do suck at this, though. Holy shit, I'm really bad at aiming. The only weapon I can actually get any good at is the Roller. With that I can get a decent winning streak most of the time. And man, the fights can get really tense in the last minute, everyone scrambling to cover the most ground. Also, there's nothing more satisfying than just rolling over an opponent that's submerged in squid form.

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The voice chat isn't needed when you can simply look down at the game pad. Oh! oh! Also, the game pad is fantastic in splatoon. If someone on your team has the echo locator, it's even more fantastic.

 

I still want 2 player online though. That'd just make my year. 

 

2015 has 4 GOTY contenders and it's only June. What a year for video_games.

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I can't really agree with the notion that there would be no place for voice chat in this game, for me that seems like it could go hand in hand with arguing that it's a dumb game with a low skill ceiling. Splatoon is super accessible and everything, but at the bare minimum there's a lot of shit that happens very quickly and people lose sight of things or get caught up on things they should disengage from, there is absolutely benefit to be had from the game allowing for some spoken coordination. At the other end, people fulfilling different roles with different builds could coordinate on more complicated strategies. The simple pre-mapped barks don't give you the fidelity of communication needed to convey some of the points you occasionally want to make and they certainly don't facilitate broader strategies.

 

I mean, but i'm saying that while also believing that Nintendo probably made the right choice by not having voice chat in the game as a matter of the intended audience and the mood the game wishes to engender, part of that being that it may not really want to be a game about precise execution on complicated team strategies. (Whether or not it actually is, and just isn't giving you the tools to do so, is perhaps something that needs to be further considered.) All that said, if i really feel like coordinating with people, i'm actually just going to set up an external voice chat anyways and play with friends. (Well... The randomized teams complicates that some, but that party matchmaking is coming!)

 

Also, as an unrelated aside, all of the skyboxes in this game have been standing out to me as especially lively and detailed. This is such a great looking game.

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I can't really agree with the notion that there would be no place for voice chat in this game, for me that seems like it could go hand in hand with arguing that it's a dumb game with a low skill ceiling.

 

I don't think there's no place for voice chat in this, I'm just really happy that the place for voice chat is not in the vanilla, free-for-all and that at that level the game is excellently tuned towards no voice chat.

 

When party match-making happens I'd have no problem with those types of games being more tuned towards voice chat, whether or not there's a built-in system for it or not.

 

More importantly, I'm hoping they make connecting to friends a little bit more friendly.. Maybe an option to just start regular battling and whenever a friend is online, to join them automatically for the next match, so I don't have to disconnect and go in and check in the off-chance that someone's online. And also let me know if a friend is waiting to join my game, making me more likely to stick around.

 

EDIT: Just as an aside, there was lot of "No built-in voice chat means this isn't a serious multiplayer game." talk before release. Made me wonder if that's what people think of LoL or Heroes of the Storm..

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I can withstand hype for games like The Witcher and Destiny but I am weak to unrelenting Twitter positivity for Nintendo things and this has broken me despite me thinking the testfire event they had looked a bit limited. It's cheap and I'm in, should be here tomorrow.

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So I've been collecting all the Sunken Scrolls in single-player, which give you tiny pieces of flavour text and artwork that serve to contextualize the setting, and holy shit.

 

Splatoon takes place in a postapocalyptic hellscape.

 

cnGcp5X.jpg

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A new map and a new weapon (the NES Zapper!) has just been announced to be released later today! Along with this, ranked play will be made available. Also I finally got the Inkling Girl amiibo today. I was not expecting how shiny the hair would be compared to my other amiibo, which have had kind of a matte finish. Anyway, I should really do those single player challenges now (but ranked play!!!)

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EDIT: Just as an aside, there was lot of "No built-in voice chat means this isn't a serious multiplayer game." talk before release. Made me wonder if that's what people think of LoL or Heroes of the Storm..

 

People who play LoL and HotS seriously play with mumble / skype / whatever. As will people playing Nintendo's new Lords Management, Splatoon.

 

btw, y'all know you're playing a Lords Management right? 

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