Splatoon: Nintendo unveils a family-friendly shooter game

Nintendo's Splatoon is the all-ages online shooter no one else dared to make. The gamerepresents a major shift for Nintendo, figuratively and literally.

The competitive online shooter for the Wii U console, which launched on Friday, looks like nothing elsethe venerable Japanese video game company has put out in years.

Welcome to Inkopolis, a hip town where the local youth spend their time spraying gallons of fluorescentink at each other in a four-vs-four competitive environment. To win, your team has to coverthearena in more ink than your opponents.

Except these kids carrying Splattershot water gunsand mischievous grins aren't really kids at all: they're Inklings, whichcan transform into squid-like creatures with the press of a button, swimming in pools of their like-coloured ink as easily as a fish in water.

Set to a funky soundtrack infused with reggae, rock and J-pop influences, Splatoon is more like aNickelodeon game show (or, for the older Canadians in the crowd, Nick's slime-dump progenitor You Can't Do That On Television)than something you would expect from the house of Mario and Zelda. AndNintendo hopes that it's found its next big thing in the uncharted waters of online gaming.

Developed by Nintendo of Japan's EAD team, Splatoon is the company's first new high-profile franchise,since Pikmin in 2001. From a company that's comfortable renewing and rehashing its decades-oldproperties in lieu of making new ones, this is a remarkable undertaking.

"We started from a point where we wanted to make a new game and a new play experience," producerHisashi Nogami told The Verge. "And once we started to decide on the elements from the charactersto the world we realized that this was going to be its own thing, and not, for example, something inthe Mario series."

Nogami's projects include Wii Sports and the sleepy cult hit Animal Crossing successes in their ownright, but not the company tentpoles like Shigeru Miyamoto's Super Mario or Eiji Aonuma's Legend ofZelda. Splatoon could be Nogami's career-defining moment.

It's also the first Nintendo-made online shooter, a genre dominated by the likes of Halo, Call of Dutyandbasically every other North American developer for roughly the last decade.

Nintendo has been much slower to adopt the online gaming in general, promoting titles like Mario Kart8and Super Smash Bros. as living-room party games first. But Splatoon is an online-first venture, andcritics have been anxiously wondering what its take on the genre would be ever since it was previewed at last year's E3 gaming conference.

A cast of squid kids shooting ink at each other is a rare family-friendly take on the genre. Unlike manyother shooters' 17-and-up rating, Splatoon is rated for ages 10 and up.

Blood and guts have disappeared

Gone are the space marines with high-tech rifles from Halo or Destiny. Nowhere will you see the blood,guts and bullets flying as in the military-themed Call of Duty or Battlefield.

National Post games critic Chad Sapieha said this was the first online shooter he felt comfortable lettinghis 10-year-old daughter play. Instead of reviewing the game himself, he let her play it and asked what she thought.

"She really enjoyed it, thought it was really fun, understood the appeal of it, but at the same time shewasn't being freaked out by anything she was seeing on the screen," Sapieha told CBC News.

Sapieha says Nintendo managed to avoid pretty much allthe pitfalls in online gaming thatparents worry their kids might encounter.

Most contentious was Nintendo's choice not to include voice chat from online play. Usually it's crucialfor players to co-ordinate their movements and strategies. On the other hand, public games are rife withplayers harassing others with sexist, racist, or homophobic language.

Splatoon does away with it all, instead letting players co-ordinate with built-in commands and functionson the GamePad controller. It's a fair tradeoff, says Sapieha.

"I can totally see the usefulness and the practicality of being able to talk to somebody else, but I'm veryopposed to pre-teens being able to talk to strangers online.

"Of course it always comes down to parents paying attention to what their kids are playing and takingan active role and interest in it. Because the ESRB rating on the side of the box doesn't necessarily tell youeverything you need to know about a game."

But is Splatoon any good?

Nintendo's objectives are broad and ambitious, but has Splatoon delivered?

Good news, everyone: On nearly every front it passes with bright, ink-drenched colours.

Online matches are a joy to play, and feel far less intimidating than other ultra-competitive first-personshooters.

Gameplay feels like a mix of several genres. You've got team-based combat as you target theenemies with your ink guns, but you have to worry about map control just as much as in a strategy gamelike Starcraft.

Combine that with some good old-fashioned platformingdo you find a high vantage point to pick offenemies, or turn into a squid and race to the melee at the centre? and you've got a game filled withunpredictability, even with the currently slim list of maps (though we're supposed to get more asdownloadable content down the line).

Online matchmaking has been near-flawless in the days since launch, and I've been able to haveseamless matches with players from North America and Japan in the same game,even on thesometimes shakyWiFi connection on the Wii U.

It's a shooter with all the depth andcomplexity of the biggest titles in the industry, and Nintendo's signatureattention to design with a palette and youthful attitude we haven't seen in years.

And it'sin afamily-friendly, gender-agnostic format that few in the realm of multi-million-budget video games evenattempt.