Life, at it’s core, is very short. You’ll go years of your life trying to become the best you can, only to have yourself wiped off the face of the earth in a giant explosion of 6, 7, maybe even 8 bombs on live TV… What?
That’s the core gameplay mechanic of The Splatters, which revolves around cute little blobs of colors who are giving there lives to entertain millions at home.
In the Splatters, you take control of multiple different colored blobs who’s bodies can detonate bombs of that same color in little playgrounds. Your goal is to detonate all of the bombs on the two-dimensional field and move on to the next round. If that sounds confusing, here’s a blip from the games official website:
You control The Splatters, an acrobatic group of liquid filled creatures. Their short life is pretty straight-forward: when you slam them, they blow up. When they blow up their liquid breaks. When their liquid falls on bombs – Kaboom!
Each level consists of three or more rounds, and each round must be completed to move onto the next level. The game starts you off in a “learning” set of levels – “Become a Talent – where you’ll face simple challenges that basically shows you the ropes of this cute little puzzler, including air raid splatters which will shoot your splatter in a different direction at top speeds, U-Turn, which reverses the physics of the game for a few seconds, as well as many other special moves which you can combine together for higher scores. In my opinion, this set of levels is the best in the game, as the puzzles aren’t overly difficult to figure out, and don’t make you want to throw your controller at anything. They provide enough moments where you’ll go “Ahh, that’s what I’m supposed to do…”, and, worst comes to worst you can just tap Y to view a walk through of that section of the game.
This section takes around an hour and a half to complete, after which you’re given two other sections to try your skills in: Master Shots and Combo Nation.
Master Shots is where you’ll want to bubble wrap your controller, because these levels are hard. This section is the one that frustrated me most, as you’ll spend a few minutes setting up all your shots and trying to get everything perfect… only to have to retry it all because one bomb didn’t explode. ONE BOMB! This is the most rage inducing section I’ve ever played! You get so close to victory only to have one simple mistake screw it all up for you, and, if that wasn’t enough, you’ll often have a hard time even replicating the shots you did, leading to more anger, and more broken controllers.
Combo Nation is the easier of the two, which just sets up some bombs and lets you feel awesome scoring combos for more points. These levels are still tricky, though, and you’ll have to use all your previous learned skills to make it through them.
When all is said and done, The Splatters isn’t a game I truly felt comfortable with reviewing. While the idea behind it is great, and I felt it was GOTY material on the first play through, the lack of multiplayer, extra levels, and any other means of real replay ability put a big hit on this games score. While I personally didn’t like this game much, I can see how some people may enjoy it. As it stands now, I have to give The Splatters a slightly above-average 6.
If you’re still interested in picking up The Splatters then wait because we’ve got two copies to give away, which we’ll be doing right over here.
