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We recently had a chance to take a closer look at a near complete build of Splatoon and, with two months remaining until release, the game is looking remarkably polished. Equipping players with paint guns instead of gaming's typical selection of assault rifles and other high calibre weaponry, Nintendo has approached the multiplayer arena shooter with fresh eyes, resulting in a fresh new experience that is welcoming for hardcore and casual players alike. Despite its unfamiliarity with the genre, Nintendo has manages to produce a visually striking game that delivers a level of polish one would expect from any of its high-profile releases.At its heart lies the foundation of a proper shooter and as such, a stable frame-rate is a must. Fortunately, even in its unreleased state, Splatoon delivers a near flawless 60fps update across the board with only the occasional dropped frame detracting from the fluidity - mostly unnoticeable in action, and something that could well be ironed out in the game's final run of optimisation. The chaotic nature of the game mixed with a free aiming system certainly presents a performance challenge beyond the scope of most Nintendo games, but the results here are uniformly excellent. Without pushing the limits of the final game we can't give our final verdict on the matter but, at this stage, things are looking very good indeed.
Unfortunately, image quality isn't quite as impressive with Nintendo targeting an expected 1280x720 without any sort of anti-aliasing to smooth out the edges. The visual design does a good job of minimising aliasing but we can't help but feel that a bit of AA would have made a huge difference here. Distant structures often appear jagged while finer details are lost to shimmering but, overall, the look works. In fact, the strong visual language and bright colors distinctly recall the burst of creativity Sega enjoyed during the tail-end of the Dreamcast era.
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