Kind of tragic to me how often AA projects get no respect. Both from the average gaming public and seemingly the company that put it out. Small scale games that stand out are thrown out in favor of AAA focus tested experiences. Then we're stuck waiting 6+ years for any major releases, the only thing to tide us over in the meantime is an ocean of remakes from the days where boatloads of games of all types came out at a constant rate. Just as every kart racer is a "mario kart ripoff" or platform fighters will always be "bootleg smash bros" ... Games that aren't so generic that comparing them to other games is pointless - are scrutinized even harder than those who didn't even try based on surface level observations. Thousands of overproduced derivative experiences with little to no unique ideas of its own? Game of the year material. Something that only tangentially shares a similar root concept as something unique? It better be the best game ever and overthrow Fortnite in popularity or else it has no worth in the eyes of most. Heck, Palworld's "Pokemon with guns" thing isn't even an apt phrase as the gameplay barely resembles pokemon whatsoever and you don't even get guns til' like 15-20 hours in. So lucky for that game the internet is making fun of pokemon these days. But I digress.
The splatoon DNA lies in this being a third person shooter in a small arena, your team's foam (ink) being a means of map control. That's genuinely about it, you have more mobility on your own foam, and the more overwhelmed you are by the enemy's foam the harder it is to not almost literally get buried in it. Ironically I find this game is succeeding the Splatoon style better than Sploon 2 and 3 did. A big part of the appeal of Splatoon from the beginning was that it was truly fresh. Sick of the decade of samey online shooters? Here's nintendo's crazy take that completely flips the genre on its head. Less about kills and more about playing the maps effectively. There was such variety in maps and weapons, you could look down to your gamepad to send a nuke strike in a satisfying and immersive way. The amount of ways you could approach a situation being so vast just by the nature of your own ink changing the landscape of the battlefield, even without physically changing the shape of the map or anything. But then splatoon 2 came along and it was more of the same but with smaller maps that turned the focus more on face to face close range skirmishes. Then on the same console Splatoon 3 hit and really didn't fix or change much of anything. So many maps not featuring much verticality or well defined ideas to play around...Point being, close range claustrophobic combat in Splatoon kinda sucks. It was never the root of the design philosophy of the original game. It was part of it but it wasn't the ENTIRETY of it. And three games with almost no significant shake-up in formula or style kind of puts a damper on it being a "Fresh" break from the tired online shooter genre.
Foamstars feels like it's onto something. Your foam literally changing the shape of the landscape brings back the verticality and ergo the seemingly endless ways to approach situations. And even better, this game has no mode where the team with the most ground covered with ink wins, it's all focused on direct combat. The kind of combat sploon 2 forced because its dev cycle was too rushed to have bigger maps despite it not being designed around it. Being designed around combat centric modes from the beginning does a lot of favors to Foamstars feeling cohesive. At bare minimum, it's got very similar quality to something like the push a tower mode in ranked splatoon. I just find your movesets for combat are a bit more elegant here, leaning just a tad more into normal shooter territory while at the same time going all in on insane cartoon angle. I think this stands on its own very well as far as gameplay goes.
Still, I can't HONESTLY say I see myself playing this game a year from now. I don't know why games now refuse to offer any way to grind for costumes. Like bruh even if I have to play for 30 hours to get a single skin that's SOMETHING don't straight up charge 45$ for an outfit and give literally nothing for actually playing the game. You gotta have some kind of hook to get people wanting to come back and for that matter, spend money. And as an achievement dork, 12 achievements and no platinum is p'lame. Almost have all of 'em in a single sitting. It's also got a frustratingly mundane presentation, feeling like it kind of wastes its great art style and music. Feels like Square Enix just didn't have full confidence going into this game's release. But I can't honestly blame them too hard considering making anything remotely similar to a Nintendo style game is an uphill battle. Would have liked to see them try to come out swinging with a less heavily monetized system, that definitely would have helped their chances. I'll definitely be at least loosely following the game but I won't be shocked to find Squeenix was ready to pretend they never made this game before it even came out. Hecc you can't even see a hint of this game on the official Square Enix store.
Sad thing is despite liking this game and wanting to love it, it's kinda hard to feel any hope for it moving forward. And while I think it's a bit lame that this game was written off by most months before it even came out, that heavy monetization and lack of customization otherwise was absolutely the wrong way to launch this game despite it coming out day 1 on PSPlus. It's a fun game but that's ultimately not enough. It's exhausting how common it is now for a game to come out and have the conversation immediately be nothing but dead game? Even for games that actually manage to drum up initial hype. Like idk man we've all been playing Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, GTAV, Skyrim, CSGO, League of legends, and minecraft for over a decade bare minimum. I'm ready to move ooooon bro 2010 was 14 years ago can we play foamstars or nickelodeon all stars brawl or crash team rumble or something. Forgive me for projecting a bit I'm just a bit exhausted at all the DOA games that end up as wasted potential. The whole games as a service space is just getting depressing. I really wish a game growing a small group of fans was enough, but it's either a cultural phenomenon we can milk for an indefinite amount of time or it's a flop that will be used as an excuse for why games that don't take ten years to make just don't get made anymore. A game of this scope just doesn't stand a chance against the expectations of the industry, doesn't even matter if it's good or not and that's honestly kind of a bummer. I'm probably looking too deep into this but I think it's rad to see Square Enix try and branch out and consistently put out so much stuff every year. I kind of suspect once they stop due to constant failure hurting their wallets and reputation, we'll suddenly start seeing youtube videos about how Squeenix during this era was one of the few devs consistently putting out cool experimental stuff that wasn't appreciated during its time. I'd certainly take stuff like this over what's happened to so many other major players in the industry. With ten year outputs looking like: The Last of us 1, The Last of us 1, The Last of us 2, The Last of us 1, The last of us 2 online (cancelled), The Last of us 2
Also good heavens why do so many online games love to waste as much time between matches as possible there's gotta be a faster way to do this.
Would love to see this grow into something special but it's looking pretty dire Foambros. If you're at all remotely interested I'd get on ASAP 'cuz Squeenix themselves are probably looking to bury it with their 9th FF7 release.
The splatoon DNA lies in this being a third person shooter in a small arena, your team's foam (ink) being a means of map control. That's genuinely about it, you have more mobility on your own foam, and the more overwhelmed you are by the enemy's foam the harder it is to not almost literally get buried in it. Ironically I find this game is succeeding the Splatoon style better than Sploon 2 and 3 did. A big part of the appeal of Splatoon from the beginning was that it was truly fresh. Sick of the decade of samey online shooters? Here's nintendo's crazy take that completely flips the genre on its head. Less about kills and more about playing the maps effectively. There was such variety in maps and weapons, you could look down to your gamepad to send a nuke strike in a satisfying and immersive way. The amount of ways you could approach a situation being so vast just by the nature of your own ink changing the landscape of the battlefield, even without physically changing the shape of the map or anything. But then splatoon 2 came along and it was more of the same but with smaller maps that turned the focus more on face to face close range skirmishes. Then on the same console Splatoon 3 hit and really didn't fix or change much of anything. So many maps not featuring much verticality or well defined ideas to play around...Point being, close range claustrophobic combat in Splatoon kinda sucks. It was never the root of the design philosophy of the original game. It was part of it but it wasn't the ENTIRETY of it. And three games with almost no significant shake-up in formula or style kind of puts a damper on it being a "Fresh" break from the tired online shooter genre.
Foamstars feels like it's onto something. Your foam literally changing the shape of the landscape brings back the verticality and ergo the seemingly endless ways to approach situations. And even better, this game has no mode where the team with the most ground covered with ink wins, it's all focused on direct combat. The kind of combat sploon 2 forced because its dev cycle was too rushed to have bigger maps despite it not being designed around it. Being designed around combat centric modes from the beginning does a lot of favors to Foamstars feeling cohesive. At bare minimum, it's got very similar quality to something like the push a tower mode in ranked splatoon. I just find your movesets for combat are a bit more elegant here, leaning just a tad more into normal shooter territory while at the same time going all in on insane cartoon angle. I think this stands on its own very well as far as gameplay goes.
Still, I can't HONESTLY say I see myself playing this game a year from now. I don't know why games now refuse to offer any way to grind for costumes. Like bruh even if I have to play for 30 hours to get a single skin that's SOMETHING don't straight up charge 45$ for an outfit and give literally nothing for actually playing the game. You gotta have some kind of hook to get people wanting to come back and for that matter, spend money. And as an achievement dork, 12 achievements and no platinum is p'lame. Almost have all of 'em in a single sitting. It's also got a frustratingly mundane presentation, feeling like it kind of wastes its great art style and music. Feels like Square Enix just didn't have full confidence going into this game's release. But I can't honestly blame them too hard considering making anything remotely similar to a Nintendo style game is an uphill battle. Would have liked to see them try to come out swinging with a less heavily monetized system, that definitely would have helped their chances. I'll definitely be at least loosely following the game but I won't be shocked to find Squeenix was ready to pretend they never made this game before it even came out. Hecc you can't even see a hint of this game on the official Square Enix store.
Sad thing is despite liking this game and wanting to love it, it's kinda hard to feel any hope for it moving forward. And while I think it's a bit lame that this game was written off by most months before it even came out, that heavy monetization and lack of customization otherwise was absolutely the wrong way to launch this game despite it coming out day 1 on PSPlus. It's a fun game but that's ultimately not enough. It's exhausting how common it is now for a game to come out and have the conversation immediately be nothing but dead game? Even for games that actually manage to drum up initial hype. Like idk man we've all been playing Mario Kart 8, Splatoon, GTAV, Skyrim, CSGO, League of legends, and minecraft for over a decade bare minimum. I'm ready to move ooooon bro 2010 was 14 years ago can we play foamstars or nickelodeon all stars brawl or crash team rumble or something. Forgive me for projecting a bit I'm just a bit exhausted at all the DOA games that end up as wasted potential. The whole games as a service space is just getting depressing. I really wish a game growing a small group of fans was enough, but it's either a cultural phenomenon we can milk for an indefinite amount of time or it's a flop that will be used as an excuse for why games that don't take ten years to make just don't get made anymore. A game of this scope just doesn't stand a chance against the expectations of the industry, doesn't even matter if it's good or not and that's honestly kind of a bummer. I'm probably looking too deep into this but I think it's rad to see Square Enix try and branch out and consistently put out so much stuff every year. I kind of suspect once they stop due to constant failure hurting their wallets and reputation, we'll suddenly start seeing youtube videos about how Squeenix during this era was one of the few devs consistently putting out cool experimental stuff that wasn't appreciated during its time. I'd certainly take stuff like this over what's happened to so many other major players in the industry. With ten year outputs looking like: The Last of us 1, The Last of us 1, The Last of us 2, The Last of us 1, The last of us 2 online (cancelled), The Last of us 2
Also good heavens why do so many online games love to waste as much time between matches as possible there's gotta be a faster way to do this.
Would love to see this grow into something special but it's looking pretty dire Foambros. If you're at all remotely interested I'd get on ASAP 'cuz Squeenix themselves are probably looking to bury it with their 9th FF7 release.
2 Comments
Thanks @GoombaOfHyrule :)
GoombaOfHyrule
2 months ago