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You're a Kid! You're a Squid! You're a Kid! You're a Squid! Get ready for a real splatfest! Nintendo's first stab at a shooter game has finally arrived, but how does it fare?

Splatoon is a third person based shooting game utlizing squid creatures called Inklings who can shift between squid form and human form. In human form, they can equip ink dispensing weapons to cover turf or splat enemy inklings. In squid form, they can swim in same colored ink, allowing them to traverse terrain quickly or even climb high walls.

Splatoon boasts a short storyline with you taking control of an Inkling as they help Captain Cuttlefish stop the Octarian army who stole the Great Zapfish from Inktropolis. It's a pretty lackluster storyline and is not very exciting. The single campaign will most likely net you about 3 hours of gameplay before you need to jump into online multiplayer to get the full game experience. Nevertheless, the single player mode does teach you the basics of the game and should be done in order to get you acquainted with the controls as much as possible.

Like I mentioned above, the Multiplayer mode online is where this game truly shines as you play two different modes: Turf War and Splat Zone. Both modes are 4v4 matches but with different rules. Turf War focuses on having teams coat the arenas they are on with as much ink as possible. Whichever team covers the most terrain with their team's ink wins. Splat Zone focuses on taking control of a rectangular area of the arena for the longest possible. Whichever team can force their timer down to zero wins. Both are incredibly fresh takes on the nowadays kill streak oriented FPS games as kills are not so important. Kills are useful to give your team more time to spray more ink and halt the enemy team from their ink coverage, but if you focus solely on killing enemies, you will most likely lose. Although matches are 3 minutes, they are intense battle arenas that can shift in power in a matter of seconds. It is a lot of fun!

You can customize your Inklings with clothes that can be bought once your inkling reaches level 4. The gear you buy will determine certain stats like ink firing rate, ink capacity, and even special weapons like grenades or mobile bombs. It's not just a fashion statement, it's also a strategy. Weapons are also quite diverse including rapid fire blasters, paint rollers which are melee oriented, and even sniper like guns. There are thousands of combinations for you to try out to make your inkling the best it can be. Unfortunately, you Inklings default color is determined by the color they were randomly given in their previous battle. Other than that, you can freely choose between the Inklings gender and eye color at anytime.

Nonny's Rating: 8/10. It's a solid game overall and the online multiplayer is addicting. It lacks single player content and if one's internet connection is not solid, they will quickly lose interest in the game as 75% of the game is Online.

Nonny's Tips: Drop your tendency to go for kills in multiplayer as they are somewhat rewarding but should not be the focus. Always move and shoot with the intention to cover as much ground. Also manage your ink well by swimming often. It'll be a lifesaver in a gunfight.