A couple of years back, there was a struggle to place a label on the original Splatoon. Was Nintendo's colourful Wii U exclusive a shooter or wasn't it? I came away perfectly content with the answer that it was simply a Nintendo game, in the very best definition of the term - something new and exciting and unlike anything else you've played before.
In the time since, it's become clear that Splatoon was a little more than that, too. A pop culture event, for one, with live concerts, tie-in animes and a heady fan fever that set in around its deliriously upbeat fiction. It's bubblegum chaos of the highest order, an infectiously energetic world that's the perfect foil for the three-minute sugar-pop classics that are Splatoon's multiplayer match-ups.
Splatoon also marked the beginning of a shift within Nintendo: it was the first fruit of an emphasis on younger development talent and a newfound willingness to step into the unknown. There's been a spark there ever since - be it in the bold reinvention of Zelda for Breath of the Wild, or the stark brilliance of Arms - that's ushered in something of a new golden age for the company. It's not too much of a leap to ink a line between the success of the Switch and the release of that strange little game a few short years ago.
0 comments:
Post a Comment