Splatting = Happy Place: How I Realised That Not All Games Have to be Violent to Have Fun with Friends!
While it’s been a good while since I’ve written one of these and it’s right to say that my 2019 (so far) hasn’t been a good one. The one thing that seems to be getting me through it is games. It all just messes with your head.
So, anyway… sob stories aside. There was one game in particular which I picked up just after Christmas last year for my precious Switch, Splatoon 2. A silly little game about squid kids called Inklings where the player goes around inking turf in online battles or alone in some story stages, they’re fun too!
There’s even an expansion (DLC for you cool kids) where you can swap your Inkling to play as one of their rivals, the Octolings, who definitely walk with a bit of a swagger. I definitely found the aptly named Octo Expansion levels to be a lot harder than the base story’s as when you lose all your lives or fail any of C.Q. Cumber’s (a squishy blue thing) tests, you have the choice of asking Pearl & Marina (Off the Hook, Splat 2’s music group/announcers?) for help — at a cost and it doesn’t come cheap.
I definitely got frustrated with the levels plenty of times and had to give into paying. At the time of writing, I’m currently trying to play through the ones I got annoyed with properly. Not easy!!
Right, so the title of this writeup. It might’ve taken me the Final Splatfest (#TeamChaos) to finally realise that not all games have to be violent or boring like COD or my beloved Borderlands to have fun with your friends.
A bunch of us on Discord via my good friend JSR’s server have recently formed the “Splat Squad”, where we team up and play a few turf wars together. We like to play regular Turf Wars, ranked (FYI, never play ranked on your own — it’s brutal) and the new private Splatfests (sorry JSR and Crash, we’re ganging up on you again! Heh.) where we can choose colours from previous Splatfests and play through all the special maps too. I do wish they’d be converted to the Salmon Run one of these days…
I always try to choose the ketchup/mustard colours — it always makes my side mustard… I’m supposed to be red, dammit! and for giggles, a stage from the Final Splatfest called MC Princess Diaries (just wait for the last minute, you’ll get it). Ahhh, good times.
Can’t really think of much more to write, other than getting to play this silly, colourful game with some awesome people I care about very much is definitely helping distract my stupid brain from everything else that’s gone on these last couple of months. If you’ve read/survived through reading this, I do hope some of it has made sense to you and maybe there’s a game that’s been helping you through some hard times too? (I’d love to hear about it!)
Thank you, Splat Squad. (Ems, JSR, Sparky, Crash and Mookii — they’re all brilliant streamers too!), You’re all awesome. ❤
