Taro Omiya

Yet another #WeeklyGameMusic from the cultural icon that is Nintendo. This week, I’d like to introduce the bizarre mish-mash of music genres, Octo Eight-Step by Toru Minegishi. A remix of the single-player campaign track from the prior game, this fresh track sets the player up to the Japanese company’s take on the 90’s Nickelodeon slime covered aesthetic in their kids-friendly shooter, Splatoon 2.

With the inclusion of Octo Expansion DLC, Splatoon 2 has two parallel stories occurring in the same Shibuya-like universe. The first follows the former pop-star and all-around snarky Inkling, Marie, searching for where her singing partner and cousin, Callie, went. Upon revisiting Inkopolis two years after her stardom, she finds the metropolitan’s power source, the Great Zapfish, missing again. Her secret-agent instincts kicking in, she recruits you — yes, your very own customized squid-kid avatar — to go defeat her old nemesis, DJ Octavio and his Octarian army.

The second story starts decidedly more grim. You — yes, another, new customized avatar; this time of octopus-kid variety — wake up as an amnesiac Octoling. But rather than in a bright, bustling city like Inkopolis, you’re trapped in a grimy subway with a crusty old veteran named Cap’n Cuttlefish. After the two explore a bit, they come upon a telephone that mysteriously informs them about “the promised land” that’s only reachable if a series of test chambers are completed. Without any further means of escape, the two agree to take on the challenge by hopping onto train, leading them to a world unknown.

Splatoon 2 is a third-person shooter where your cartoon sea-creature/humanoid hybrid fires brightly colored ink. The most popular mode of the game, Turf War, is a four vs four battle where each team paints as much of the stage in their own team color as much as they can. After the 4 minutes time limit is up, the coverage of each team is tallied up, and the team that covers the largest area wins. Much like any shooters, team members can use their weapons to temporarily incapacitate the other team’s players. Unique to this game is how each player can turn into a sea creature that both swims in, and perfectly blends into, their own ink color. To further add variety, the game also has two more modes: Ranked Battle, a competitive 4v4 team match on a randomly selected rule-set, usually involving fighting over a designated area or item; and Salmon Run, a four-player co-op mode where players defeat waves of computer-controlled salmon-like enemies and collect their eggs.

Splatoon 2 is released on the Nintendo Switch. As of this writing, no other ports exist.