PigLick on 11/6/2014 at 09:12

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Mario Kart 8 controls like a hot knife through butter

MAN BUTTER

Briareos H on 11/6/2014 at 10:12

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Yeah I think Splatoon looks amazing. From the initial presentation, it looks like the developers went with a few core ideas and everything fell into place nicely more or less by accident or trial-and-error, which is probably the best way when making a game.

Territorial domination and contentious areas can be appraised in a single glance. Small fixed-size teams means anyone can jump in without community fragmentation. Offensive and defensive tactics can be chosen dynamically and locally without need for a change in loadout. The large difference in speed and agility between the two character modes allows more agile and skilled players to travel very quickly as squids with moves resembling those found in both fast FPSes and shooters with parkour, especially if a less skilled team-mate prepared the area of play beforehand (another occasion for intelligent teamwork). On the other hand, it will be difficult to have this strategy work without problems when you face a very good team, as they will be blocking areas of fast movement with their own ink, creating small pockets of intense, localized combat with a real sense of a goal to fight for. And because of that, the ability to long jump to the location of your team-mates is absolutely brilliant: not only does it mean that their efforts to reach a difficult location won't be in vain, allowing to try to push through in situations where it wouldn't be normally possible, not only does it mean that players will always be doing something meaningful instead of walking empty corridors going from A to B but it will also be a double-edged sword, giving the opposing team a chance to break through your own defenses unnoticed and taking some of the fight onto your own territory while you're busy helping a friend far away. It's quite interesting how these mechanics reverse some of the paradigms of classic team DM / domination and I'm willing to bet it's going to be super fun to play.

Almost everything is taken to its logical extremes leading to a feel of immediacy, take enemy spotting for example: since everyone is shooting ink more often than not, and because ink is a spurt with a well-defined origin, spotting an opponent is very easy -- even from places where they can't see you -- so, to balance that, they gave the ability to camp in open space by waiting patiently in an ink puddle; for all intents and purposes, the tension they removed by making it super easy to spot moving enemies was transferred to the risk of someone camping out in the open and sniping you when you don't expect it. Finally, the level design is what makes or breaks that kind of game and it appears to be pretty good from what we can see, although that's not much.

I also quite like the looks of it, though I would love a non Nintendo-sanctioned version with lots of gore 'n guts even more :D

SubJeff on 11/6/2014 at 12:21

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That looks great.

PigLick on 11/6/2014 at 13:17

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there is no sub-narrative here, I just thought the game looked cool and the idea of making it more graphically violent never even crossed my mind.
You've answered my question.

Briareos H on 11/6/2014 at 14:47

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On the one hand I was wrong in initially interpreting that 'why?' as loaded; on the other hand I honestly didn't see any other possible answer to that besides 'because I like gore', so it was reasonable of me to wonder what other type of answer could have been expected. No big deal, who cares, Splatoon looks great and we all can agree with that, etc.