Quick Look: Splatoon 2 - Octo Expansion

Is anyone else having audio issues with recent Quick Looks? I'm getting a lot of repeated audio bits and stuff drifting out of sync.

I have an inkling that this will be an interesting quick look

@cory_and_trevor:

Hips dont lie.

I put many hours into Splatoon 2, I'm very interested to see if this DLC is worth getting back into the game for.

They just skim over the chat logs, which is a bummer because my understanding is that there's some really wild stuff in them. I've only seen a few screenshots, but they contained some surprisingly bold statements for a Nintendo game (such as one conversation where Pearl and Marina get increasingly uncomfortable as a fan is backhandedly racist as shit toward Octolings with stuff like "I don't see species" and "Marina, you're just so ARTICULATE!")

I only have 3 games for my Switch so far, I feel like I need to get this game to expand my library.

I really wish there was one test failed by not meeting the requirement instead of just dying. It's kinda brutal how Cucumber just executes you. Was really hoping for that in the target stage, but abby bailed entirely on the level with 10 seconds to go.

And I'm not deep into the splatoon lore either, but the dialog is pretty good. You can tell Abby hasn't read a single line of dialog at all given the things she didn't know, which seems prematurely dismissive.

I was given Splatoon 2 for Christmas and haven't touched it yet. I was knee-deep in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and just never went back to check it out. I'm not a big shooter person, especially competitive stuff, but the offline challenges are definitely super appealing. I'll have to give it a go here soon and see if it's worth digging into the ol' wallet for the Octo expansion.

Good QL, though a minor thing Abby kinda glosses over is that the chatlogs are pretty lore-heavy and actually give a lot of backstory for the main NPCs and the war itself.

She says there's not much there, but there totally is if that's your thing.

@pudge: Yep same here, bombcast videos too.

That'd point me to a CDN issue rather than a recording/equipment issue.

Quick looks are my favorite thang

Why are you talking like an infomercial?

haha Abby's infomercial voice when she's explaining something or introducing/closing out a stream lol

The chat logs in this DLC are both very important and super fun. Really sad that Abby just skipped over them.

Wow, that character select screen is... something. Just nude Octolings in a fetal position. Huh.

@pudge: been happening a lot with videos lately for a load of people. Rorie's looking into it.

Bummer that they spent so much time looking at the least creative element of the expansion (rehashed boss fights), but yeah, this expansion is great! Nintendo have been batting 1000 with their first party DLC for sure.

#OJ<3GB #TheJuiceIsLoose

I'm all for criticality in when it comes to race in media but she's saying she's articulate sarcastically because Marina is just replying with ellipses...not that she's articulate for a member of her race or something like that.

Cuttlefish keeps saying he doesn't see species, at this point in the chat he's said it like 5 times and both Pearl and Marina just ignore him. The game plays with age and the past, Cuttlefish is old and thinks he's helping by saying that stuff. The story is about exploring the past and accepting that things change.

Again, totally willing to listen to criticism of biases and whatnot but I just don't see it here.

@pudge: Yes, not just quick looks. I've noticed it on several of the the E3 vlogs as well.

I barely played any Splatoon 2, I should get back in to it.

That looks more like Jeff B's taint than a heart.

Giant Bomb Live Journal?

Man, I still haven't picked this game up. I really want it, but Mario Tennis Aces is coming up, and I enjoyed the test run from a while back.

Yay, saw Alex reference the Ukranian love ballad karaoke guy in a Deus Ex QL on Infinite yesterday, good to see he's still about!

Such a fresh style.

There are a lot of great touches in this DLC! And I thought the endgame (after collecting all the thangs) was really well done.

A bit disappointed there weren't more new songs but we did get some bangers.

I look forward to buying some replica memcakes from someone's Etsy store.

I was appalled when she didn't know Marina was an Octoling...

I still haven´t picked this up, but totally should at some point. I wish I had gotten Hyrule Warriors on a cart so it didn´t monopolize 80% of the default storage space on my switch.

Also thanks Abby for doing your best to make this quicklook informative. It was very much so.

@pudge: Are you using the youtube player or giant bombs? I tend to get it on the gb player if my internet isn't keep up with the buffer.

Bone.

Great Quick Look, might have to give this game another shot. My Switch has pretty much turned into a work lunchtime multiplayer Mario kart event at the moment.

This seems totally uninteresting, the jetpack/target shooting/timed stuff is not the part I like about Splatoon, and this seems like a lot of that.

Will also say I was a lil disappointed to see the lore stuff skipped over. Totally get it’s not Abby’s thing, but as someone who (ever since the first game’s amazing final boss fight) has been weirdly invested in how much they’ve thought through the world and the characters, Octo Expansion actually really delivers on that! Those chat logs in particularly are pretty funny and well written, and the story goes some really cool places if you cared about the story + lore of both games. So it’s mostly just disappointing in that it would have been nice to show people who care about that stuff that it’s there. (And, similarly, I think the lore makes it make sense that you only unlock stuff after beating the story - your entire purpose is getting to the surface, after all.)

also I put over 5 hours into trying to do the thing you get for doing all the levels the other night, and have not beaten it still, so... yup, pretty challenging, though I think most of the levels are very well made and not too frustrating

@vhdblood: There’s a pretty decent mix of levels, since there’s 80 of them. Some are more or less normal levels, while others have different gimmicks or are more minigamey. The things you describe definitely repeat (as do some of the other gimmicks), so I’m not going to say it might actually totally be for you, but if you enjoy the normal story modes there could be a lot you’d enjoy here still.

And even when things did repeat I never felt myself going “oh, this again...?” since they’re all fairly different. If anything, a complaint is that I was clearing levels line-by-line and they don’t really clearly escalate in difficulty that way, so sometimes I dealt with a very challenging level and encountered a much easier version (though in a very different level) of the same gimmick much later on. Difficulty escalation might be more around specifically trying to get to the Thangs, but I haven’t examined it enough to be sure.

This was a disappointing quick look of a pretty good expansion.

Inklings... they are inklings.........