It’s fair to say that the success of Marvel Rivals can’t be denied. After all, it had ten million players in just three days and is already doing its best not to be like the many other team shooters out on the market right now, including the ones that went heavy on the live-service side of things instead of focusing on the actual games themselves. However, like those titles, they are up for doing seasonal events and doing special modes within those events. For the winter season, we’re getting the “Joyful Jubilation” event, which will feature all manner of winter-themed outfits for several heroes while also adding in an “oddly familiar game mode” featuring Jeff The Shark.
Dubbed “Jeff’s Winter Splash Festival,” all players will become Jeff The Shark for a period of time and then have to not only fight one another but attempt to color the stage the most so that their side can win. If you’re thinking, “Wow, that really does sound familiar,” it’s because it’s basically copying Splatoon! Don’t believe us? Watch the trailer below and see if the Inklings don’t come to mind during the gameplay segment:
Okay, obviously, Marvel Rivals took this game idea from Nintendo, and it’s a bit cheesy that they would be this blatant about it. They even call it a “splash” festival, which is literally two letters away from being a “splat festival,” you like, like a Splatfest? The irony here is that this is hardly the first time that a game has tried to rip off the success of Nintendo’s “Squid Kid” franchise. You may recall that Square Enix tried to do it with a certain foam-based game, and it didn’t work out too well for them. Just saying.
As for the Marvel title, we can give them a bit of slack as this is just an event mode and not a main mode of gameplay within the full title. Still, let’s have some class and at least admit you stole something, okay?
Blatant copy and pasting aside, the game has been a hit with fans since before launch, and now, the dev team is just “fine-tuning things” so that they can make it even more fun for gamers. Case in point: Jeff The Shark is BROKEN in the game, and the team has had to nerf him a bit. He’s not alone in that department, though, and as new characters come in and players go “beyond the bounds” of the intended programming, more changes are likely to come.