As a PC-only gamer, I feel an occasional twinge when a bunch of people I know are all playing the same console game. Forced to endure tweet after tweet about Destiny, for example, leaves me feeling left out. I never got to experience the horror of PT, and it sounds like I never will. The most recent example is Splatoon, the Wii U game. Everyone seems to be having fun with it except me. Poor me!
All is not lost, however. Creative block wizard SethBling has created a version of Splatoon you can play in Minecraft.
Strictly speaking, this isn't a mod. It's a map and a very clever use of Minecraft's command blocks. But, hey, it's a fun creation, and I'm sure it took quite some time and effort, so I'm gonna say it counts for this week's column. I appreciate a custom game that only requires me to join a server to play it, and it's a nice excuse to revisit Minecraft, something I rarely find the time to do these days.
I have to admit, despite hearing so much about Splatoon, I don't really know how it works or what it is because most tweets about it can be summed up thusly: OMG SPLATOON!!! However, after watching SethBling's introductory video, I get the gist of it. Two teams compete to cover a map with their team's colored ink.
There are a few different weapons available in SethBling's Splatoon that you can choose from before the round begins. There's the Splattershot, which lets you rapid-fire ink blobs. There's the Splat Charger, which acts like a long-range bow. And, there's the Splat Roller, which paints a stripe in front of you as you run around. You can also transform yourself into a squid, which lets you slip through the map more quickly, and even climb walls if they've been painted in your team's ink.
The Splatoon map is meant for 4v4 matches, but it can support larger groups, and most of the sessions I've joined have had around 10 to 15 people.
As for how to actually play, you can download the map and install it on any server running Minecraft 1.8. You can also simply search for a server that is hosting it and join, as I did. Now, if someone could just bring the Uncharted series to Minecraft, I'd be all set.
