Many fans were let down by the PlayStation Showcase that arrived yesterday. The biggest reason is that Sony had hyped this one up, yet the deliveries were “subpar” in many gamers’ minds. To be fair, there were plenty of trailers, but that was also part of the problem. There were numerous trailers but no real feel of gameplay for leagues of them. Plus, even with the big trailers like Marvel’s Spider-man 2, which did have gameplay footage, we didn’t get release dates for numerous PS5 titles. Then, there was Foamstars, which many online call a “Splatoon Ripoff.”
“But is it right to call that game a ripoff?” Well, yes, yes it is. First, as you’ll see in the trailer below, the game is a 3rd-person 4v4 shooter where your goal is to use foam to “augment the battlefield” and then take out your opponents. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s pretty much the same feel as Nintendo’s beloved IP.
Plus, the foam has different colors, you can customize your character, etc. The only real “difference” is that the characters in the game are more “realistic” instead of the “Squid Kids” from the Nintendo games.
If you don’t believe us, you can look at the trailer yourself and make the call:
If you go onto Twitter, you’ll see plenty of reactions to this “ripoff,” and most of them are mocking both Sony and Square Enix for even thinking of making a “copy” like this:
That last tweet is rather poignant, as it does speak to how Splatoon went from an “unknown property” to one of the biggest things Nintendo has done in years.
Case in point, when the third title came out last year, it shot up the sales chart in Japan so fast that it became the country’s fast-selling game in history! That doesn’t just “happen.” If it weren’t for a certain “pocket monster” title in 2022, it might have been Nintendo’s best-selling game of the year.
Going back to the Square Enix title, you can see just how much of a “parody” the game is, and you have to wonder if the company known for RPGs simply went, “Well, Nintendo made it work, so why not us?”
Only time will tell if that is the case, as Nintendo puts a ton of effort into making their ink-based series fresh in the long term, including having free “seasons” of content and big events that bring gamers together.
We’ll have to see if they can do that with foam.
