Although Splatoon’s matches were so frantic that there was rarely time to look down, having a map constantly available is a heck of a privilege for a shooter whose maps get inscrutable, fast. Maneuvering with the GamePad was a comfortable experience for me - it could be because I have oversized baseball mitts for hands, it could be because the tablet’s horizontal shape is easier to swing around - but what I really missed about it while playing Splatoon 2 was the controller’s touchscreen. The GamePad was what sold me on the Wii U all those years ago, and Splatoon was the rare game that made it feel really vital. We’ve written before about how this second screen was the console’s smartest innovation, even if it rarely realized its potential. It’s hard to attribute this to any logical factor, but what I point to is the Wii U GamePad. Splatoon was the rare game to make the GamePad feel vital Those can be turned off, but the weird thing with the first Splatoon is that I didn’t want to turn them off, unlike nearly every other Wii U (and Wii, frankly) game I’ve played. Motion controls can still be used to adjust the camera and aim, but the smaller form factor of the Joy-Con controllers and their accompanying grip make this more of an annoyance than they were on Wii U. What has changed in notable fashion is the controls, by necessity. Splatoon 2’s online functionality doesn’t seem to have changed much from the 2015 game, although we’ll have to see how the Switch online multiplayer app adjusts the experience. The online multiplayer wasn’t the most winning part of Splatoon - that would have to be its irresistible sense of style - but damn if I didn’t love playing round after round in the cephalopod shooter.
It was Nintendo’s first new IP in a long, long time, and it was in a genre that company had rarely tried to develop within, let alone with success. On Wii U, Splatoon shined as an outlier, a true original in a catalog of familiar franchises. Those can mostly be boiled down to “It’s Splatoon, but on the Switch this time,” which is a great sell - except that by the global testfire’s end, I was desperately missing the Wii U. After a round with Splatoon 2 this weekend, I’m finding plenty of reasons to be excited for one of the Switch’s first big multiplayer games.
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