Tyler Gadd

First of all I would like to say I had a lot of fun at the beginning of my experience playing Splatoon. Here are 3 reasons why I am rating 2 stars (-1 star per fault). 1. Disconnect, disconnect, disconnect. Sometimes it happens in the lobby and sometimes it happens in the middle of the game. Usually tends to be other players but I have been booted out of ranked games and it forces me to take a loss when I do not get disconnected from other games. I have 1GB download fiber and WiFi 6 generally seeing a 700gb download speed through WiFi. Check reddit to see the numerous complaints of disconnects. So many in fact that sometimes I waste 10 minutes TRYING to play this game with 3-5 back to back occurrences. Very unenjoyable. 2. Splatfest sucked. My girlfriends little sister came over for the weekend and we chose team sour. Turns out this was the worst team out of the 3 with about 15% player population compared to sweet with 56% population. The rewards for competing are fairly similar, but they took away all other game mode for the weekend. Which means we could not play regular matches with my GF sister or compete in ranked. On top of that being forced to play for team sour and losing 90% games was frustrating. I'm not sure if team sour had more kids or if it was just bad players but in the regular game mode we have about a 50/50 win loss ratio. We were averaging 1 win to 7 losses in splatfest and trust me, we played alot. All rewards aside, we were unable to enjoy our weekend and wished to play the regular modes. Now that it is over, we are back to winning 50/50 thankfully. 3. I moved on to single player because of point 2. Figured hey, this game has got different modes lets try them all. Had a blast for the first few islands exploring and finding all the secret items. Each mission/level had checkpoints and helped explain and how to use all items and tactics of Splatoon. I found this very informative and enjoyable until I made it to "One way ride through target town". This is the only level that has no checkpoints and you must hit every target while riding a rail PERFECTLY. If you make 1 mistake close to the end, you must redo the level in full and ride the rail for 2 minutes again without a mistake to attempt to succeed where you haven't in the passed. It becomes so frustrating to even figure out what to do when there is 2 minutes of game play you play over and over and over. Even once you understand how to complete this level, it is no easy task. The game forces you to waste endless time in this one instance. I'm all for a challenge, but this is just frustrating. For reference I hold platinum trophies in MGS5 and RDR2 which are much "harder" than this game. Leading me to conclude in my years of gaming that this game overlooks the simple understanding of what a game should be; an outlet to have fun. +1 star for graphics and fun/cool paint visuals and effects. Loved the selection of weapons and different uses allowing versatile play styles. +1 star for being like paintball meets 3rd person shooter with excessive paint use. Cant say I've played something like this before. -1 Disconnects -1 Splatfest -1 Single Player "One way ride through target town"

Original rating would have been 5 stars! The game comes across as a neat spin on Little Big Planet but with a different theme. The first few islands were original and entertaining all the same but my girlfriend and I are completionists. So after about 4 or 5 islands we were getting very exhausted and annoyed trying to find and collect everything. This game forces you to play each level 4+ times. You can't even collect everything until you clear each level once and then you have to go back in and find specific items 1 at a time. Not to mention the game already has a regular side and then a reverse side. Then all the collections runs to find the crafts makes for way too much forced replay.

This game is actually garbage. My girlfriend and I have been playing for 3 weeks now. We read that the game was a "slow" start. This game has a dead-stop-no-start-at-all complex. There isn't much to do except fish, catch bugs, craft. At first we liked the peacefulness and simplicity as we don't have too much time to play. But every other day you can't perform 1 of your 5 tasks. E.G. Can't donate to the museum when its under construction, and it has multiple upgrades which take a full real life day each. Can't sell to the store and it has multiple upgrades which take a full real life day each. If you catch a scallop and air aiming for the miles reward and your inventory is full, you lose out on meeting pascal for the reward. You can only move 1 resident in per real life day, etc. etc. The game hardly feels like your playing anything, its more like you're being told exactly what you can and cant do and for a sandbox game this is ridiculous. Not to mention this game feels like a very old school text base anime. Talking to your residents is kind of neat/fun as they say odd and funny things at times. But try to sell your stuff at the nook and cranny, you have to wait for a loading screen to get in, have to talk to the store workers and go through 2 or 3 bubbles of text each time you want to sell. Oh yeah you have to go to a different spot in the store to buy and go through 2 or 3 bubbles of text just to get in. Why can't I just buy a sell in the same spot, why do you have to give me the same text a million times (and yes you will sell a million times)? This games whole business model is to give you useless-time-slowing-filler to make it feel like you are playing a game. It sure gave us perceived value for the first 3 weeks. But I am done being frustrated by not being able to perform the 1 of 5 tasks I try to each day. Play online with friend? Sounds great right. Nope... This has got to be the most archaic online system I have ever played on since dial-up internet was around. Each time a friend wants to join your island you must wait for them to fly in, the whole island is forced to stop in the process. Meaning, in order for your friends to connect, you must close your nook phone, not be talking to any NPC's, and then and only then do they have the opportunity to fly in. It takes about 2 minutes for 1 friend to fly in so if you have 2 or 3 friends joining you, this is going to take about 10 minutes because they have to play who can push through the airport first while they all are getting "Too busy" to fly msg's. Its the same terrible thing when they leave, close your phones, stop what your doing and wait for them to leave. Why can I not play when a friend is connecting...literally every other online game in the world has figured this out. The idea of this game is neat. The art work is cool. The house designing is fun... that is if you like running from 1 loading screen to another and another. Yep each room in your house it its own instance... load, load, load, load. If they can make a full island seamless, why do we have 4 tiny rooms in our house separated by loading screens? Wake up game devs and do something right. I now understand why I got this game for $50 (CAD) brand new sealed. There is no game inside the cartridge, just a waste of money.

This is honestly one of the worst games I have played. Its a neat concept so I figured I'd give it a try. To summarize my thoughts. This is a game for children. There is really nothing hard or skill testing about this game. Its mostly random luck but with some major annoyances it would be rare for anyone to want to play this longer then 10 or 15 minutes. Pros: 1. Fresh idea for a game. Its the reason I tried it in the first place! Cons: 1. It forces you to go through a loading screen when you get knocked out to spectate other players. This means you have to quit and go through another loading screen to get out. And then another waiting/loading screen to get back into the game. Just seams like a cheap way to make people take longer before another ridiculous. 2. There are only 3 button commands, pull, dive and jump. They are about half a second delayed. So unlike every other game you have ever played, you must train your fingers to hit buttons before you actually need to do the action. 3. One match with this giant teter-totter like things I feel off about 10 times in the same location. What happened was people made this go almost vertical. It took 20-25 seconds just standing there with a group of people because we were all unable to move or progress through the race. The dev's seriously need to drop this time to like 3 or 4 seconds. It feels like eternity standing there for so long in a race. I get the random aspect, but balance it a little. The first group of people that made it accross finished before we could get past the first part. This game is not for anyone who games. Small children or newbie games might fight this appealing. Glad it was free on PSN and I didn't waste any money.