Last night, I held my first Splatoon get-together. While I’ve been playing Splatoon online on most nights lately, this was the first one that I’ve announced ahead of time on Twitter and Facebook. Three of my Wii U friends joined in: Qwerty (Nintendude), Meli, and DaBraxMan. The other spots were filled by random players, of course. For those who don’t know, Splatoon doesn’t allow you to open private lobbies just for your friends.
Here’s a lovely group photo of me, Meli, DaBraxMan, and a guy named David.
The night’s levels were Bluefin Depot and Blackbelly Skatepark. I don’t think I’ve played on Blackbelly Skatepark much before last night. I don’t care for it too much, but maybe it will grow on me eventually. I’m not a fan of the two-levels-per-four-hours thing either; it’s not unusual to do the same stages five or six times in a row.
Still, playing online turf wars is ridiculously fun and addictive. I lost more battles than I won tonight, but I had a great time. Despite the game’s flaws, Splatoon is probably my favorite online Nintendo game since Mario Kart Wii. It’s rare for a game to keep me playing for hours at a time, and coming back nearly every day.
Here is a video showing three of last night’s battles. At the end of the first battle, my Kraken got lifted up into the inkstrike tornado. I thought that was kind of funny.
I reached level 19 during last night’s battles, just one level short of the maximum. I’ll probably hit level 20 at some point this weekend. As for the game’s story mode, I completed it about two weeks ago. It’s very enjoyable too, but it’s shorter than I would have liked. I don’t recommend Splatoon to anyone who isn’t going to play the game online…at least not at full price. The bulk of the content is online-only. If you haven’t seen my video showing the first three levels of the story mode, you can see it here.
I’ll be having more Splatoon videos in the future, and I’ll also have my review coming up in the not-too-distant future.