{"id":13676,"date":"2015-07-13T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T00:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=13676"},"modified":"2015-07-07T23:59:49","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T23:59:49","slug":"the-mini-games-of-splatoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/13\/the-mini-games-of-splatoon\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mini-Games of Splatoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SQUID_BOX\"<\/a>You know how the Discovery Cable Channel has Shark Week?\u00a0 Well this week we\u2019re going to have Squid Week, with squid themed blogs at the beginning and end of the week.\u00a0 This first blog will be about Splatoon.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a very well-received Wii U title and a lot of people have praised it.\u00a0 But not a lot have talked about the retro-styled mini-games in Splatoon, so I\u2019m going to do that right now!<\/p>\n

There\u2019s probably one good reason why not a whole lot have talked about the mini-games.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little tricky to get them!\u00a0 You have to have the Splatoon Amiibo 3-Pack to unlock them all, and they\u2019re pretty hard to find.\u00a0 I was lucky enough to snag a set, and I wasn\u2019t going to buy the Splatoon game unless I could get the set, because I wanted to have all the games unlocked (I just like retro style mini-games).\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to miss any content just because I couldn\u2019t get some Amiibo figures.\u00a0 But I\u2019m glad I found the Amiibo figures because the game is really fun.<\/p>\n

\"AMIIBO_SPLAT\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So what you have to do is go to the special Amiibo display in the game\u2019s hub, scan an Amiibo, and then you get a set of missions from the single player game mode, but with special rules.\u00a0 The Girl Amiibo lets you use only the sniper gun, the Boy Amiibo lets you use the paint roller, and the Squid Amiibo has a mix of limited ink missions and timed ones where you can be the Kraken.\u00a0 By completing missions, you\u2019ll either earn money, special gear, or one of the three mini-games (one is already unlocked).\u00a0 You can play the mini-games two ways.\u00a0 There is an arcade cabinet in the Inkopolis Square, or you can play them while you wait for online matches to start.\u00a0 You play the games on the Wii U pad, and it\u2019s a pretty good idea.\u00a0 So here are the mini-games you can play!<\/p>\n

Squid Jump<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK so the first game you don\u2019t have to unlock with any Amiibos.\u00a0 It comes with the game already so I won\u2019t talk about it too much (you could even play it during their Global Testfire).\u00a0 It kind of reminds me a bit of Doodle Jump.\u00a0 You make a squid jump on platforms in a vertically scrolling stage.\u00a0 You won\u2019t die if you fall too far, but there is some rising purple water that will kill you, so you do have to keep moving upward.\u00a0 You hold down the trigger button to charge up and release to jump.\u00a0 Charge up more to jump higher.\u00a0 You can also charge while in the air, which saves time, but when you do this, you have less control over your left and right movements.\u00a0 So it\u2019s a tradeoff.\u00a0 Watch out for moving platforms and icy floors in later levels, and collect power-ups that\u2019ll help you jump higher.\u00a0 Make it to the top to win the level.\u00a0 Again, anyone can play this game on Splatoon, so I won\u2019t go into the game any further (although that\u2019s about all the game is anyway).<\/p>\n

Squid Ball<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one is kind of a volleyball game.\u00a0 Your squid is on one side of the net, and a group of jellyfish and starfish are on the other side.\u00a0 Your job is to knock a certain number of them out with the volleyball to move onto the next level.\u00a0 You get three chances, and each ball is bigger than the last.\u00a0 Except they aren\u2019t really balls.\u00a0 I think they\u2019re either shrimp or snails or something.\u00a0 The graphics aren\u2019t good enough for me to really tell what things are supposed to be (remember those days?).\u00a0 Anyway, the balls will be served on your side of the field, and you must move left and right to bounce them into the air.\u00a0 Then press the R trigger button to jump (just like Squid Jump) to spike the ball to the other side of the net.\u00a0 Depending on where you are and where you jump, you\u2019ll spike the ball at a certain angle, but it\u2019s still pretty hard to judge where you want it to go.\u00a0 It kind of reminds me of the GameCube volleyball game Beach Spikers, which is one of my favorite sports games.<\/p>\n

Squid Racer<\/strong><\/p>\n

This top down racer reminds me of Atari\u2019s classic Sprint games.\u00a0 You and a bunch of other squids race around various tracks, most just go from point A to point B with a curve or two in between.\u00a0 Press the R trigger button to accelerate and the control stick to steer, also kind of like the Micro Machines games.\u00a0 You can also press the L trigger button to do a powerslide, but since it\u2019s hard to tell where your squid is facing, this can be a tricky move to pull off.\u00a0 You can also collect power-ups that look like the volleyball fish, but I\u2019m not sure what they do.\u00a0 I think one lets you take out other racers if you run into them.\u00a0 You can go onto the next track if you place and don\u2019t run out of time.<\/p>\n

\"SQUID_SCREEN\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Squid Beatz<\/strong><\/p>\n

The last unlockable game is a music rhythm challenge where you choose any song from the game and time button presses to the beat.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure how you score or anything.\u00a0 The music just loops over and over and there is no score or Game Over requirements that I can tell.\u00a0 I think this is really just the game\u2019s Sound Test Mode with a little interactivity thrown in.<\/p>\n

Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s all the games!\u00a0 Despite the bad things I said about them, I still think they\u2019re really fun.\u00a0 Hopefully Nintendo will let folks unlock those games in the future without having to get the Amiibo figures.\u00a0 In the comments section, let me know what your favorite Splatoon mini-game is!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know how the Discovery Cable Channel has Shark Week?\u00a0 Well this week we\u2019re going to have Squid Week, with squid themed blogs at the beginning and end of the week.\u00a0 This first blog will be about Splatoon.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a very well-received Wii U title and a lot of people have praised it.\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13676"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13678,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13676\/revisions\/13678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}