Back in 2015, which is apparently 10 years go now, the shooter genre was packed full of heavy-hitting, very serious, macho video games about firing bullets into people.
This was the year, after all, that brought us Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (one of the best ones) and the incredibly shiny Star Wars Battlefront (the first time a polished floor genuinely impressed me in a game, and that’s the nicest thing I’ve had to say about Star Wars in ages). We also had a new Halo in the form of Halo 5: Guardians (also great) and Rainbow Six: Siege — one of the all-time best team-based co-operative shooters — also arrived on the party scene.
It was not, therefore (on the face of things at least), a particularly strong time for Nintendo to release a cartoonish, colourful, and very silly-looking shooting game, and new IP to boot, about squid children (that’s humanoid cephalopods to you, mate) who fire paint at each other.
Personally, it also happened to be around the exact time when I felt utterly done in with online shooters, and online gaming in general, as it had all got a bit loud and obnoxious, to be fully honest. An evening spent listening to strangers scream racism and homophobia at each other (amongst other things) just wasn’t doing it for me, and so I sort of drifted away from multiplayer completely. Until Splatoon arrived.
even though its time in the spotlight has long since passed, there is still a very good experience to be had in the single-player content
Here was a game that delivered some of the best and most unique team-based shooting fun I’d seen in ages (heck, we slapped a great big 9/10 on it at the time), but most importantly it gave me surprisingly intense, strategic, competitive multiplayer shooting action where nobody was being terrible into my ears or eyes. I was back on the scene, thanks to an inability to communicate properly with other humans. Hooray! It was also the most I ever used my Wii U, but that’s another story for another time.
It’s been talked about ad nauseum, of course, how shooters (and most other competitive games) can be awful when full freedom of talking (or shouting) is allowed. Muting, while it works, feels like I’m having to somehow curtail myself because of the actions of others. No thanks. Instead, Splatoon gave me signals which, whilst sometimes confusing, made it so games went down without rage induced by others.
All good. However, I’m not here to talk about that aspect of the game; here on Splatoon’s 10th birthday, nobody wants to hear me whittle on about that any more than I already have. What I really wanted to impress, very quickly, on you today is that even though Splatoon’s servers have been officially shut down now, even though its time in the spotlight has long since passed, there is still a very good experience to be had in the single-player content that they can never take away from us. I won’t let them.
Yes, Splatoon 2 and 3 ran with the concept through flashy DLC offerings, and to read some reviews you’d swear the single-player in this first game was a bit of an afterthought. However, that’s not the case. In fact, there’s a solid 10 hours of gaming to be had for solo players in Octo Valley, the game’s fantastic offline offering.
Octo Valley sees you assume the role of Agent 3, an undercover-typed individual sent by Cap’n Cuttlefish to infiltrate the Octarian’s secret underground lair. What follows is a surprisingly involving mix of Super Mario Galaxy-esque platforming and signature Splatoon splatting that utilises your squid abilities in lots of fun and clever ways.
Through five areas split into a bunch of zones which combine shooting challenges, clever platforming, and exciting boss battles, Octo Valley is never anything less than very, very good fun indeed. It also serves as great tutorial — as well as a nice look back at how things started for the series compared to where it’s at now — if you’re into that sort of thing.
“Great tutorial” really doesn’t make anything sound good, does it? But I’m not damning with faint praise at all, it really was needed on my part to get good at the game (this is where to go to become ‘one’ with the motion controls) and there is some absolutely top-level Nintendo magic at work in both level design and the melding of gadgets and abilities in this solo mode. It’s genuinely top-notch. Also, finding all those kettle locations is gonna take you a good long while, believe me.
I was so enamoured with it all, in fact, that it’s what made picking up both sequels a no-brainer, much more so than the hugely enjoyable multiplayer stuff, which I always seem to get bored of, no matter how good it is. And Nintendo continued to deliver through the amazing Octo Expansion for Splatoon 2, which gave the sequel a single-player aspect that matches its multiplayer for quality, and 3, which is the best of the lot for those flying solo in terms of its base story mode (I have yet to try its DLC so shan’t comment on that).
And so, on its first double-digit birthday, I think it’s worth remembering — and especially now that folk may consider it a no-go, an unplayable relic due to its servers being offline — that Splatoon has a great single-player mode waiting for anyone who has yet to give it a spin. It may start off a little slowly, leading you through the various controls and showing you all the best tricks, but once you’re rocking, once you’ve taken out your fill of the 15 tricksy enemy types (put your hands in the air if you hate Octocopters), and five excellent bosses, things really do take flight, right up to that final confrontation with DJ Octavio and the Octobot King.
I mean, how are you not rushing to redownload it already when you know there’s a boss with a name that overblown to get stuck into trouncing? What do you mean you sold your Wii U?
Splatoon (as a final little birthday compliment, you understand) has also managed, thanks to a clever choice of style in its art, music, and characters, to remain a sort of ageless thing. It hasn’t gotten old. It still looks and feels fresh as ever. Just like me.
Do you rate Splatoon’s single-player offerings? Did you play the original game’s solo mode? Do you still have your Wii U? Let us know about it in the comments.
