Splatoon

They're both fantastic groups in their own right, but I'm more partial to the Squid Sisters, personally. Their story mode is objectively far inferior to Octo Expansion as far as level design is concerned, but the lengths they're shown to go to protect one another is genuinely pretty touching and I hope it'll be explored further in Splatoon 3.

Edited by Midna on Jan 10th 2019 at 5:29:00 AM

I'm still bummed they messed up the final battle in 2's base campaign, especially with how amazing of a boss DJ Octavio was in the original.

With how much they nailed music and atmosphere in 2, had the gameplay not been a letdown this battle would've been memorable as hell.

Edited by Elbruno on Jan 10th 2019 at 9:11:43 AM

I like both duets for different reasons.

The Squid Sisters are the mostly wholesome modernized country girls, while Off the Hook has a salt-mouthed little Princess and a pretty 'foreign' DJ and has a stronger asymmetric "smol and tall" appeal.

Agreed - both groups have their own unique appeal. It's perfectly understandable to prefer one over the other if your tastes run a particular way in character design or in music style, but there's also so much variety in said musical styles that there's something for everyone, I feel like. I personally don't like "Shark Bytes", for instance, and if you asked me to compare it to a given Squid Sisters song it'd probably lose to all of them, but "Nasty Majesty" is a banger and it's right up there with "Tide Goes Out".

I still think the vocalist anemone in Chirpy Chips is adorable.

the violinist from the bottom feeders is the cutest >:c

Yeah, in general it's kinda apples and oranges in comparing them; they just have different dynamics and it's really down to personal taste.

Same goes for the varying types of music.

Do you think Inklings’ primary sense isn’t sight that they didn’t notice that obvious Octoling Marina is octoling or do you think they’re just unobservant and open minded?

I think it's the latter. They just don't give a damn about stuff as little as different looks if the person in front of them is cool and fresh as shell.

Also, for me Nasty Majesty I don't really like, while Shark Bytes is my jam.

The newest generations simply have not learnt what Octolings look like and mistake them for Inklings with strange fashions and makeup :V

Yeah, I think 'unobservant and open-minded' fits the bill, really. When you look at the other species in Splatoon's world, Inklings and Octolings are among the most similar - and the majority of living Inklings have probably never seen an Octarian, let alone an Octoling. Marina's eyes are the big giveaway, but other than that she doesn't look too different. It'd be like one of us inferring that, say, Skrillex is an alien, and being right about it.

you mean hes not?

It says something when Marina feels comfy enough to fall asleep leaning on Pearl :3c

One notable thing about Octolings that I rarely see people comment on is how their suction cups of their tentacles are outward rather than inward like Inklings.

On thinking about it, whatever history or memory of the great turf war exists probably focuses on the octoweapons and less anthropomorphic octarians instead of the octolings

Given that several inkling hair(?)styles involve cutting the tentacles, it isn't impossible that they mistake the octoling suckers for some sort of modification.

That was one of the first things I noticed when Marina was revealed.

Beating the Octo Expansion.

Fun ride, that. Even the more out there challenge choices. And the boss fight against Agent 3 rocked.

The final boss was a little less well rockin', though. Imo they slightly chose being cinematic over playability, and there were quite a few frustrating things about it that felt like they could've been better conceived. Agent 3 felt both more challenging and less like a chore, despite being harder and taking up more of my time.

The credit song rocks. Much like the first game, I didn't find the actual song played during the boss fight all that interesting.

Octo Expansion ain't done till you beat the bonus boss.

That (and more importantly, the rest of Iso Padre's gear) can wait. I have some ordered gear to grind for.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 14th 2019 at 4:05:47 AM

You are already splatted.

@Known: My main gripe with the final boss fight was basically that it bottlenecks your progress, meaning you could nail the first parts of the fight and still end up running out of time because the phases of the fight are triggered by how much time is left on the clock rather than how fast you're actually going. While I understand that the purpose is probably to makes sure that it maintains tension the whole way through, it was still a bit annoying to potentially time out at the end despite getting a fairly large buffer.

Yeah, I hated that. There were several parts in the first half of the match where I was standing around the next target for anywhere up to ten seconds, doing nothing and waiting for it to spawn, whereas a rolling spawn rate would have broken it up less. That extra time does nothing for you, because you can't use it.

Not helping is the last set is spread out enough and late enough you're forced into a desperate time crunch that is really, really not fun to deal with.

Cinematic as hell when you nail it, but not something really worth redoing.

Fuck the bonus boss though, goddamn Neo-ass motherfucker

Next Japanese Splatfest announced in CoroCoro magazine.

Boke vs Tsukkomi

February 3rd