I spent a bit of time before my shift at work today playing Splatoon. Having finished the single player, I jumped back in to the multiplayer for a few games, and was reminded quite how much I like that game — a fact that surprised me somewhat when I first played it, given that I’m not normally one for competitive multiplayer shooters, team-based or otherwise.
Splatoon is a bit different from your usual multiplayer shooter, though, in that there are no game modes that require you to kill the other team. Instead, most of them are about territory control of various types: the basic “Turf War” game mode, for example, involves covering the ground with ink of your team’s colour, with the winner being decided by majority coverage after three minutes. Other game modes found in the Ranked Battle mode vary somewhat in what they require you to do, but none of them are straight-up deathmatches, which means there’s no necessity to be a 1337 MLG noscope pro.
Splatoon is testament to Nintendo’s desire to make games accessible to everyone. Competitive multiplayer shooters are historically rather elitist in nature, with inexperienced players often being mercilessly mocked or picked on until they “git gud”. Unpleasantness in chat — be it voice or text — is so expected that it’s become something of a cliché to talk about racist thirteen-year olds playing Call of Duty; consequently there are many people — myself included — who, preferring their games to be fun rather than an unpleasant experience, avoid this type of thing and thus tend to miss out on games that, despite everything, are often quite culturally significant, not necessarily from an artistic perspective, but as an activity that brings significant numbers of people together.
Splatoon could have easily been a disastrous failure, being a Wii U game. Yet it has gone on to become one of Nintendo’s biggest success stories all around the globe, with it rarely being difficult to find people to play with, whatever hour of the day you happen to be online. I was expecting it to be hard to get a full group together when I played this morning, for example, but was pleasantly surprised to be matched with a full team almost immediately — since Japan was awake and happily playing away already.
The other nice thing about Splatoon is that it doesn’t have a chat function. Like, at all. This drew some criticism on its initial release, since it’s sort of an expected feature in your typical multiplayer games these days, but in Splatoon’s case it really isn’t necessary or desirable. The GamePad screen allows you a tactical overview of the entire battlefield and what your team is up to, and simple controls allow you to send messages of support or requests for assistance to your teammates without having to speak. By taking away the chat facility, the ability to abuse one another is also taken away, keeping things family-friendly for everyone and encouraging veteran players to play nice with newbies, since if you’re not being a team player you’ll just end up dragging your teammates down and, in most cases, throwing the game as a result.
The other thing I particularly appreciate is that games are over quickly. No twenty-minute slugfests here; a single match is just three minutes long, meaning that even if you’re stuck with a team of AFKers, you don’t have to suffer for too long before things are mixed up and you can try again with some new companions. And since teams are jumbled up before each match, even if the same players stay together, it’s rare to see unfair dominance from one side or another.
Above all, Splatoon is just plain fun. It’s colourful, it’s energetic, it’s humorous and it’s highly enjoyable — even if you don’t typically like multiplayer shooters. I’d highly encourage you to jump on it even if it’s not usually your sort of thing — you may just find yourself pleasantly surprised by how much fun you end up having.
I beat Splatoon’s single player mode this evening, and was thoroughly impressed with the final boss battle — a thoroughly old-school and long fight that demanded you put into practice pretty much every skill the rest of the game had subtly taught you up until that point.
That got me thinking, then: what are some of my favourite final boss battles? I am, as I’ve previously mentioned on these very pages sometime in the dim and distant past, a real fan of a good finale to a game, since I’m one of those apparently rare breeds of gamer that actually likes to beat games. I love well-done final boss fights that go the whole hog, with impressive graphical effects, a stirring and unique soundtrack and a feeling of excitement and satisfaction unlike anything else in the rest of the game.
So here are five of my favourites. Not necessarily my absolute favourites, but five that spring immediately to mind, and in no particular order.
Final Fantasy VIII: Ultimecia
The easy choice would be Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth, of course, and to be sure the battles against Bizarro Sephiroth and Safer Sephiroth are indeed spectacular, particularly with the stirring tones of One Winged Angel accompanying the latter.
But I actually really appreciated Final Fantasy VIII’s final conflict, because it unfolded in a number of interesting and dramatic phases, each one raising the stakes significantly until the final final boss, which, by this point, you absolutely wanted to throw everything you had at.
The battle begins with the party attacking a regular-sized Ultimecia accompanied by the “sorceress battle” music that has marked major battles throughout the rest of the game. This is then followed by Ultimecia summoning Griever, an embodiment of the protagonist’s image of the “ultimate Guardian Force”. New music comes in here. After this, Ultimecia “junctions” herself to Griever, creating a monstrous entity, and fighting the party to the sounds of the famous battle theme Maybe I’m a Lion. And finally, the obligatory “fighting the true form of the final boss in something that looks like space” phase is accompanied by The Extreme, a high-intensity, pumping piece of music that gives this final phase of the battle a real sense of urgency.
Like most Final Fantasy games, Ultimecia was a bit of a pushover if you’d spent the time preparing properly, since final bosses are never the most powerful things in a Final Fantasy game; optional, so-called “superbosses” are, since their extreme difficulty would likely prevent more casual fans of the game from clearing the story. Make no mistake, though, she didn’t go down particularly easy — particularly compared to Sephiroth in VII — and the necessity of throwing your most powerful spells and Limit Breaks at her meant that the fight was consistently interesting and thrilling to watch.
Space Channel 5 Part 2: Purge
It’s kind of strange to think of a rhythm action game having a final boss, but Space Channel 5 was far from being a typical rhythm action game; the emphasis was very much on the “action” side of things, as between the two installments, it told an enjoyable — if utterly camp — story filled with dancing, singing and guitar battles.
The final battle in Part 2 felt surprisingly climactic and movie-like. It was also a textbook example of a “spirit bomb” battle, in which the protagonist looks like they’ve been completely defeated — indeed, some theories suggest that Ulala is outright killed by Purge’s initial assault — but is then given new-found strength and abilities by the power of friendship/love/belief/whatever. In the case of Space Channel 5, this is reflected in both the visuals — you see throngs of people dancing behind Ulala as the battle progresses — and the audio, which features a crowd of people shouting the directions as opposed to just Ulala as in the rest of the game.
This battle also does something I particularly love with its soundtrack: it provides a new twist on the game’s main theme, bringing a wonderful sense of closure to the whole experience.
Super Mario World: Bowser
I mention this one not because it’s a particularly amazing fight — compared to some other battles I could mention, it’s fairly unremarkable — but because, to the best of my recollection, Super Mario World was the first game I ever played to completion and saw the end credits of. Consequently, it was also the first time I had ever encountered a final boss battle, and I very much enjoyed how it was a slightly different setup to the rest of the game, that made you realise Shit Was Getting Real.
The usual status bar at the top of the screen was no longer there, it was a single-screen stage rather than a scrolling level, and it was accompanied by unique music and graphical effects — in this case a rather rudimentary but effective thunder and lightning effect.
This being the era long before GameFAQs use was widespread, I had to work out how to defeat Bowser myself. It took a good few attempts to determine what to do, and a good few more to actually correctly put it into execution. But my goodness when I finally achieved it for the first time it felt absolutely amazing. I probably cheered. Like, out loud. I forget. But, needless to say, it was a very exciting moment indeed.
Ace Combat 4: Megalith
I came to the Ace Combat series relatively recently and still haven’t played them all to completion, but I was thoroughly impressed with Ace Combat 4 from start to finish. It took air combat, something that could have easily been extremely dry and clinical — the old MicroProse sims of yore sprang to mind — and turned it into something cinematic and dramatic, with wonderful setpieces and incredible music.
The crowning glory of the game, though, was the final mission, which was set up and executed absolutely perfectly. The prior missions had set you up to expect something horrendous to fight against, and it’s finally revealed as “Megalith”, a superweapon that will, not to put too fine a point on it, wreck everyone’s shit if allowed to do its thing.
You know that things are getting real when the pre-mission briefing screen, which usually had some rather arcadey music accompanying it, was instead accompanied by near silence, with only a heartbeat-like throb in the background. And then once the mission begins, you hear this:
Incredible stuff. Particularly as, in appropriate action movie style, you wreck Megalith’s shit by flying inside it and dropping bombs in its most sensitive areas.
Splatoon: DJ Octavio
Finally, the reason I’m writing this at all: Splatoon’s final boss.
The battle against DJ Octavio is a textbook example of an old-school boss battle, particularly those favoured by Nintendo. It’s a lengthy affair that is far more than simple tank-and-spank: you need to make use of all your skills to beat it, and it’s not easy. It’s also quite unforgiving, giving you only three lives to play with (though you can replenish these by reaching checkpoints in the fight, which is one thing we didn’t used to get in the old days) and lots of opportunities to fall off into oblivion or be splattered by his many and varied attacks.
The cool thing about DJ Octavio is that it’s designed in the same way as the rest of Splatoon’s single-player mode: it’s made to encourage you to use various skills and techniques that will serve you well in competitive multiplayer, which is, after all, the meat of Splatoon. Multiplayer battles are chaotic, and the fight against DJ Octavio introduces you to this fact gradually over the course of the battle, beginning by simply throwing missiles and punches at you — the one constant throughout the fight is that you have to “reflect” his punch attacks back at him by shooting them before they strike you or the ground — and gradually, over time, stepping things up with more treacherous ground to fight on, additional enemies, powerful superweapons and more things happening at the same time.
By the end of the fight, you’re essentially handling the same mechanics, but at a much higher speed and with more distractions. Deal with that and you’re almost certainly ready for the unpredictability of human opponents.
For bonus points, the DJ Octavio fight also includes a lightweight spirit bomb in its final phases: the music changes from the dubstep-techno-type stuff Octavio has been playing at you throughout the fight to a song sung by Splatoon mascots Callie and Marie, who have been helping you out in not-very-good disguises throughout all of the single player mode. It’s a great way to close out the fight, with a real feeling that you’re being encouraged to do your best against seemingly impossible odds — and consequently finally getting everything right and clearing the game feels just as satisfying as that first time I beat Super Mario World all those years ago.
So good job, Nintendo; while many people may not think of you immediately when contemplating spectacular finales to games, it’s clear you know your shit when it comes to badass bosses.
Been playing a bit more Splatoon, and I really like it for a number of reasons. Turns out that Nintendo’s first real foray into the dedicated online multiplayer sphere (as opposed to titles like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart, which include online but don’t make it a focal point) is a really solid effort that does things a bit differently from the norm and is consequently a better, friendlier, more accessible experience as a result.
Splatoon’s structure may seem restrictive to those who have been raised on more well-established shooter franchises. You can’t purchase any new weapons or other equipment (each piece of which confers a buff of some description, and which can be levelled up at least once to unlock additional abilities) until you hit level 4, and until you hit level 10 you’re restricted to playing just the “Turf War” battle mode.
In practice, though, this all works really well. Turf War — a mode where whichever team covers more of the map with their colour after three minutes wins — is a good introduction to the game, emphasising how it’s important to work together as a team. By the time you hit Rank 10, at which point Ranked Battles with different rulesets unlock, you should be pretty comfortable with how the game works and perhaps even have found a favourite weapon style.
The other interesting thing about how Splatoon works is that rather than throwing all the maps and modes into the rotation and making people either vote on them or set up their own lobbies, it simply uses a small, rotating roster: two maps for Turf War, two more for Ranked Battle, and one of the available game modes chosen for Ranked Battle too. Every few hours this rotates.
This is also an excellent system. It encourages you to familiarise yourself with the maps, and since there are only two in a given set at any point, if you settle down to play a few games, you’ll get the opportunity to learn their intricacies rather than being forced into always playing community favourite levels until the end of time.
So far I’ve only played the Splat Zones mode in Ranked Battle: a variant on King of the Hill in which you have to take control of one or more zones by painting its floor in your colour to score points. It’s a different experience to Turf War; while Turf War is usually on the move, often with a scuffle over the map’s middle ground, Splat Zones forces you to both go on the offensive and defensive according to the position you’re in. Taking advantage of the squids’ abilities to hide under their ink makes for some enormously satisfying stealth “kills” (sorry, “splats”) and there’s a real sense of fun when you manage to outwit an opponent who’s been giving your team grief.
I haven’t yet had the courage to jump into some games with the folks on the /r/splatoon Discord server, but they seem like a friendly bunch open to giving advice, so I may look into that in the next few days. After all, I am level 12 now; that’s at least a bit fresh, I think…
Wandered into town today to take care of a few bits of business, and decided that I’d trade in some games I didn’t really play any more and that wouldn’t be difficult to find again (Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed, stuff like that) and pick up Splatoon.
I’ve been idly following Splatoon since it was released, but I’ve held off picking it up because I’m generally not a massive fan of competitive games, and while Splatoon does have a single-player mode, it’s most well-known for its online battles.
Well, after spending a couple of hours with it this evening, I’m kind of sorry I waited; it’s really, really good.
Most of you reading this are probably already familiar with Splatoon but on the offchance you aren’t, it’s a Wii U game from Nintendo that is a rare example of them putting out a non-Mario or Zelda-related IP. Moreover, it’s actually an all-new IP, and one that deserves to do well, since it has some great character designs and witty writing, even in a game so focused on competitive multiplayer.
I haven’t tried the single-player at all yet and I’m only level 6 in multiplayer, so I can’t talk about the complete experience as yet, but what I’ve played so far has been a whole lot of fun.
In your early hours of Splatoon, you’re restricted to playing “Turf War” mode; a four-on-four affair in which the two teams compete to cover as much of the level with ink as possible over the course of three minutes. At the end of the match, the area covered is totted up and a winner declared, and individual rankings are shown so you can see who was pulling their weight more than others.
The genius of Splatoon is that it’s a competitive shooter (third-person in this case) in which the emphasis is not on killing other players, but instead on surveying the overall situation of the battlefield and acting accordingly. There’s no voice chat, but this isn’t really a problem, since you can coordinate your efforts with others simply by glancing at the overview map on the GamePad screen and seeing what regions need your attention. The fact that all you’re expected to do is cover as much of the level as possible with ink keeps things simple and accessible — though you will give your team a small advantage if you can fend off your opponents, sending them back to their base and wasting a bit of time as they respawn and make their way back to where the action is.
The other thing I like about Splatoon is that it’s apparently possible to pick up and play it and immediately be quite good at it. Out of the fifteen or twenty matches I’ve played this evening — they’re short and snappy, which is lovely — I was on the losing team only twice. There’s plenty of variety in the weapons, but none of them (so far, anyway) feel like they’re massively overpowered or anything; most of them can be countered in some way or another, and even the “superweapons” can be dodged and avoided if you know to recognise the warning signs soon enough.
I’m convinced, then; this is a good game that I’m looking forward to exploring more in the coming days. And it seems there’s a really active community, too, both on Reddit and Discord, so I’m looking forward to getting to know some new people.
I can officially confirm, then, that I am indeed a kid now, a squid now, a kid now, etc. So that’s nice.
