We got up really early on that Friday morning. It was Day One of PAX East, and the NWR crew shuffled out the doors of our hotel and packed into two cars. Traffic was bad because it was Friday and we were going to the convention center at the same time people were trying to get to work. Once we got off the highway, we realized that Boston’s downtown streets are not equipped to deal with convention traffic, especially with something as popular as PAX. But we eventually left the car in Lauren Ronaghan’s capable hands and ran into the bustling convention center. Getting our media badges was a snap, and all of us media people were herded into the back of the Expo Hall, because media people got an hour’s head start on the rest of you peons. Neal suggested that we take that opportunity to play Splatoon, a game he assumed (correctly) would spend the rest of the show completely mobbed. Even here, at 9:15 in the morning, there was a line. Nintendo had eight Wii Us hooked up to eight TVs, and the systems were joined via some local wireless hub—perhaps the Warp Pipe accessory! Eight players, divided into two teams of four, played a practice session before diving into two back-to-back competitive matches. Understandably, the line moved slowly. But once we got in there, time flew by.

For the uninitiated, Splatoon is a game in which you control a chibi character holding a water gun filled with paint. The goal is to cover more ground with paint than your opponents. Spraying walls doesn’t count towards your square footage total, but does have its uses (read on). It’s a bit like that old Tony Hawk multiplayer mode, but with paint instead of tricks. The map we played on looked like an enclosed series of city alleyways with some topographic variety. You spray paint with one shoulder button and turn into a squid with the other. Squidification is delightful; your character literally dives into the paint and can swim anywhere paint exists including up paint-covered walls. This can lead to some interesting alternate routes or “sniping” positions. Swimming through paint also refills your paint.

I didn’t like how the camera was controlled—both by the right stick and by tilting the GamePad. This led to some accidental camera movements that I didn’t like. Hopefully there’s a way to turn off one or the other, because having both on simultaneously was jarring. In addition to your paint gun, you have access to paint grenades, which cover a fairly large swath of real estate in your team’s color, and a paint bazooka which you activate by clicking down on the right stick. The bazooka gives you five seconds of uninterrupted shots but I found it difficult to know when I actually had the bazooka—or how you get it. The rep had to tell me at least twice that I actually had the bazooka and I should use it. There’s an on-screen indicator but it’s not at all obvious.

Due to the layout of the course, both matches basically stopped when the two teams met in the middle, whereupon they spent more time killing each other than covering ground. Getting hit with too much paint warps you back to the beginning of the course (there is a short respawn timer). Thankfully, you can actually look down at your GamePad, which displays a bird’s eye view of the action, and tap one of your teammates to warp directly to their location. Our team won the first round but lost the second.

Overall, the game was quite fun and looked great. I can only assume that differing map layouts will change how you approach the game. I do have three worries: First, I hope that there are more game types than just “cover the floor with more paint than your opponents” because that will get old quickly. There’s great potential here for deathmatch, capture the flag, and other standard shooter game types. Second, I hope the netcode is good. It’s great in Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros., so I really have no reason to worry, but it’s just something I worry about. Third, if Splatoon is going to catch on, it needs to have online voice chat among friends and during matches. Customizing a bunch of speech bubbles to the D-pad isn’t going to cut it in a game like this. That Nintendo hasn’t actually said anything about voice chat is deeply concerning.

I’m looking forward to Splatoon. It’s strange to say that I’m becoming an online gamer, but between it, Smash, and Mario Kart 8, there’s a lot to love right now.