Splatoon review: ink, charm and lots of ideas

Nintendo has not quite created the perfect shooter for people who don't like shooters, but it is lovely, exciting and very cool

Splatoon - Nintendo's take on shooting games - is as wonderfully, vibrantly creative as the phrase "Nintendo's take on shooting games" might suggest. An entirely unique central mechanic removes the usual assault-rifle-toting grunts in favour of shape-shifting squids with a guns full of ink. Your aim is to paint the environment with as much of your team's colour as possible, taking out rival players as you go.

At any point, if you look down at your Game Pad controller, you can see the world being slowly covered with lurid ink, like an animated Jackson Pollock painting, giving you an indication of both score and movement. At the end of each fiercely contested, inky tug-of-war, a chubby cat announces the score as a percentage, tallying up the two with a slow build and a sudden reveal.

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