I've been ruminating on a previous review for this game. the miasma around it contains a lot of current ambient thought patterns of the affectionately-named "nintendrone" crowd, specifically around topics that have arose in the Switch Era. I think for many of us zoomers in the age range for backloggd (and the broader sphere of gaming culture online in general), the beginning of the switch's life cycle was a special moment. for me personally, the switch released a week before my 18th birthday, and after eventaully snagging one during its inital availability drought, it was my first real console that I owned. not just a shoddily-maintained handheld or a hand-me-down sixth/seventh gen console for me to fiddle around with, but something with brand-new games releasing for it that I could hook up to a TV! the bounty was particularly rich that year too; botw day 1, rereleases of several standout wii u titles, a brand-new collectathon mario game, a long-awaited "true" sequel to xenoblade, and splatoon 2, a multiplayer shooter tuned specifically for the zoomer crowd. the original splatoon presaged our modern neon-color, trend-focused, "what's cool with the kids?" mass-culture shooter wave that awoke from the decline of the tacticool brown-and-grey military shooters of the late 00s and early 10s. it's only natural that nintendo would ride the wave onto their big launch for the switch, and at just the right time as well, lest we forget that fortnite released in early access within the same month that splatoon 2 hit shelves.
five years later, it's inarguable that our perceptions would have shifted. the pangburn who had not started college yet grinding out turf wars on the couch is now halfway through grad school. I've now seen the many ups and downs of the switch as nintendo has consistently reprised their role as the clueless corporate granddaddy of gaming, prone to making jarring business and PR decisions more often than they can spit out decent games. I've witnessed the internet at the same time fall out of the honeymoon period many of us had with nintendo during 2017. putting so many great titles in the launch window left 2018 particularly dry other than the excellent smash ultimate late in the year, and when the release train revved up again in 2019 the quality was much more uneven. wrapped up in 2017 specifically was a revitalization of japanese gaming that brought attention back to the kind of games I'm primarily interested in -- the aforementioned nintendo titles, yakuza 0, nier automata, persona 5, resident evil 7 -- but those good times weren't going to last, right?
hence my interest in the aforementioned review. its main thrust is that nintendo is leveraging FOMO in order to sell everyone on a new copy of splatoon; which is true in the sense that this is how every new game is sold at retail price. it's also an accusation that nintendo has been rightfully accused of exploiting for their limited-time mario 3DAS and shadow dragon rereleases, or their underproduced amiibo lines and retro plug-and-play consoles. there's also a significant portion of this review extolling nintendo's countercultural original splatoon aesthetic that has been dampened in subsequent releases. personally I don't find any of these games particularly against the grain unless we're discussing it through the lens of the prior onslaught of modern warfare-era titles, which is a shaky ground to stand on considering in that case splatoon set the new standard and now suffers the proliferation of its copycats. punk? maybe pop punk... lord knows I had a steady diet of blink 182, alkaline trio, jeff rosenstock, pup, and screeching weasel back when I was playing splatoon 2 regularly. and isn't it more punk to deface clean hotels and malls in the name of artistic anarchy?
meeting those points at face-value means I'm getting lost in the smokescreen though, I need to dig deeper. because there are multiple valid mentions of this new entry lacking innovation, but they're nonsubstantial and swallowed by the rest of the remarks. this is understandable: it's hard to elaborate on features that don't exist. these are buoyed with remembrances of the earlier titles and how fresh they felt at release, contrasted with the stale aura of this new title. there's a general sense that something is wrong with this new game, right? it must be something new... but there's so little here that's actually new that it's hard to pinpoint. could it be the locker cosmetics and their associated "catalog" score, which scans as a battlepass in a post-fortnite world, or the new gachapon machine set up in the lobby? the former is entirely passive and totally free, so its only sin is just being cribbed from contemporaries, and the similar daily gacha is just an extension of that pernicious old ability chunk grind. what could possibly be that missing piece, that absent little bit of soul that the game lost between splatoon 2 and 3?
to me that answer is nothing. I think that line of inquiry is a dead end. my actual opinion? splatoon 3 feel bleh because splatoon 2 (and probably by extension splatoon 1) felt bleh. they're the same game!! I have returned to the well of squid kid bliss and instead am left wondering how eight years into this franchise I am still left without a way to alter my loadout, or play on more than two maps in a given mode at a time, or properly choose which ranked mode I want to play without having to wait for the choices to rotate every two hours! there are reasons these restrictions were originally set up, such as a limited initial set of stages for splatoon 1 or the need to make sure that ranked has a short matchmaking time, but there are other avenues to pursuing these aims that don't come at the expense of player choice and freedom of expression. I just want to use aerospray without getting trapped with these goddamn fizzy bombs, these fucking things that not only need to be cooked to make any impact but even then stil pale in comparison to virtually every other subweapon. could I please get a special that isn't reefslider as well? could I perhaps at least get to avoid playing on a stage that doesn't have walls that make reefslider glitch out near them? or at least could I not have to play on mahi mahi resort like five times in a row?
which is not to say there aren't minor QoL additions that perhaps alone make splatoon 3 marginally more playable than splatoon 2. the addition of a physical lobby where you can practice between rounds feels more engaging than the menus of the prior games, and thank god that I can finally make a room for my friends rather than messing with the awkward drop-in system. at the same time however, nintendo seems to be floundering a bit in terms of actually making substantial improvements to the game. in their stead, many changes have been made that seem to exist purely to justify the sequel status. sheldon, for instance, takes tickets now for weapons instead of money, which more closely ties his selection to your level progression I suppose? at the same time you still cannot truly skip his obnoxious spiel every time you set foot in his shop, so it might as well not have not been a change at all. the way that ranks for ranked mode are maintained now consist of a universal rank instead of individual ranks for each mode with the tradeoff of individual losses counting much less. perhaps there was a calculated reason for this change, but it ultimately makes me favor avoiding ranked modes which I'm particularly bad at such as tower control due to retaining my overall rank from my preferred modes such as splat zones. these are all side-steps to existing mechanics without being solutions to issues, and they hurt my impression of the game.
I must stress that I do like the overall design of splatoon, regardless of the nitpicks above. the way that refilling ink encourages traversal and the way that turf war flips typical PvP interactions on their head (running is often a viable option!) makes the flow of each match visceral as you continually move from area to area in a mad dash for territory. this is why I sunk so many hours into splatoon 2 back when this concept was still so novel for me. however, this style of play also creates very momentum-heavy matches where the outcome of a match can feel certain only halfway through. walking through endless puddles of your opponents' ink, especially the closer it is to your home base, makes me feel dejected even if I manage to get a kill I'm happy with or make a substantial endgame push towards the opponents' lines. this is amplified by the meager rewards from a match loss; seeing those progression bars get a few sparing drops towards a new level after trying your hardest in a match makes me feel like I almost wasted my time playing. when not playing competitively and thrown in with random team members into a game that seems to tacitly encourage communication, I feel pushed away from participating for more than a few matches at a time, just like I did towards the end of splatoon 2's life.
this is something that really felt noticable for me after I recently tried out modern warfare 2's online beta on the advice of a friend. having not played CoD since middle school, I was shocked at how different the atmosphere was. unlike splatoon, modern CoD is enraptured by the current trends in shooters with its season-based structure and mountains of progression bars, but at the other end of it there's something still very personal and intimately fun waiting in store. getting a double or triple kill at all could keep me going through multiple fruitless deaths afterwards just from the giddiness of succeeding in a split-second interaction. overall team scores just didn't matter, as my personal performance and growth felt rewarded by the systems of the game. who has time to worry about teammate behavior when you're succeeding on your own terms? splatoon 3 makes efforts to rectify this issue with its per-match rewards to each player highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, but these seem to confer little outside of maybe influencing the rewards in an anarchy series. perhaps nintendo is trying to highlight competition and community, but in a game where you have absolutely no way to engage with your teammates before and after matches, the effort seems wasted. splatoon could potentially learn some tricks towards crafting a more efficient timewaster from its contemporaries instead of half-heartedly incorporating their progression systems.
this bears mentioning though: just how much of my enjoyment with CoD came with not engaging with the game for over a decade? has my critical perception been inadvertedly weighted towards the novelty of it in a way that I've lost with splatoon? and again, how much of my degredation of splatoon 3 comes from releasing after a shoddy couple of years for nintendo's public-facing wing? splatoon 3 sits in the middle of a pretty good lineup of switch titles, but in the time since the original hype has died down it's much easier to feel and hear the nervous whispers of those wondering what the hell is going on with tears of the kingdom's rollout rather than the basking in the glory of breath of the wild still fresh in everyone's minds. of course, even breath of the wild cribbed much from its open-world contemporaries, and even though I loved it at the time I can see the criticisms from those who weren't too dazzled to see through the brand recognition on top of it. so perhaps then, splatoon has just been another multiplayer shooter all along, and the light is just harsh enough now for us to call it what it is.
------------------
there is something behind that $60 price tag, and it's.... tableturf battle. this might have been the case if nintendo had bothered rolling out online multiplayer for it, but leave it to them to surprise in the oddest of ways. instead we get a brand new single-player mode that seems to derive more from octo expansion (note: I have not played it) than its direct predecessors for better or for worse. I played about sixty total levels including the three mid-game bosses but not including the crater or rocket levels.
splatoon 3 opts for more focused, puzzle-like level design over its predecessors, which were built around every potential loadout being used in every level. this entry opts for bespoke loadouts for each stage to maximize the amount of encounters it can build around those particular weapons. in a few cases this results in some really clever stage design (I'm thinking of the curling bomb stage towards the end of the game that focuses on tightly-aimed ricochets) but in most cases falls surprisingly flat. much of this is due to carrying over many enemies from the prior games with few updates. these octopi foes generally have extremely poor mobility options compared to the protagonist and generally wield highly-telegraphed projectiles that can be easily evaded, and this game in particular really struggles to emphasize its intended stage routes with how useless most of these enemies are. this is particularly noticable with how many basic cover configurations you'll fight enemies from that seem almost copy-pasted throughout the game. splatoon 2 has its own foibles (overly long, unfocused level design) but generally designed more interesting arenas with better escalation of conflict than 3 does. splatoon 3 has a tendency to lock down level progression into very pre-defined, "solvable" encounters that do not surprise the player when completed "correctly" and feel broken when subverted by obvious means. this could still be elevated if that escalation of conflict was engaging, but splatoon 3 tends to favor overloading each level with rote expressions of the player's toolkit before hinting at more thoughtful level designing past the final checkpoint. the curling bomb stage perfectly showcases what could have been the case for these levels, where initial simple ricochets build up into longer areas with movable walls, platformers, and adversarial inkers to navigate and plan around; it helps that for this level the solution space is purposefully wide and more daring solutions yield rewards.
the more explicit puzzle stages have a couple bangers as well (the pac-man level is particularly cool), but too many fall into common level design traps like long obstacle cycles to listlessly wait through or boring auto-scroller sections. I could understand trying to make these easily solvable to make sure everyone has access to the final areas, but in this mode virtually every level is optional, and I would've enjoyed seeing some more out-of-the-box puzzle ideas beyond just shooting targets with a particular weapon on an ink rail or simple rube goldberg contraptions. some of these are particularly frustrating; the one I have to highlight is the tennis level, where the angle of the player's camera behind the "net" sort of kills my depth perception in the void beyond where the targets are shot from, and the level ends with a block that taps the net and never makes it into your play area as some sort of sophomoric joke to force you to replay another minute of scripted tennis target shots. bleh. just less than what I would expect from nintendo in terms of design finesse.
bosses are fine, but the standout is definitely the area six one. probably the most explicit reference we've seen yet to another game that dealt with cleaning up someone else's ink...
five years later, it's inarguable that our perceptions would have shifted. the pangburn who had not started college yet grinding out turf wars on the couch is now halfway through grad school. I've now seen the many ups and downs of the switch as nintendo has consistently reprised their role as the clueless corporate granddaddy of gaming, prone to making jarring business and PR decisions more often than they can spit out decent games. I've witnessed the internet at the same time fall out of the honeymoon period many of us had with nintendo during 2017. putting so many great titles in the launch window left 2018 particularly dry other than the excellent smash ultimate late in the year, and when the release train revved up again in 2019 the quality was much more uneven. wrapped up in 2017 specifically was a revitalization of japanese gaming that brought attention back to the kind of games I'm primarily interested in -- the aforementioned nintendo titles, yakuza 0, nier automata, persona 5, resident evil 7 -- but those good times weren't going to last, right?
hence my interest in the aforementioned review. its main thrust is that nintendo is leveraging FOMO in order to sell everyone on a new copy of splatoon; which is true in the sense that this is how every new game is sold at retail price. it's also an accusation that nintendo has been rightfully accused of exploiting for their limited-time mario 3DAS and shadow dragon rereleases, or their underproduced amiibo lines and retro plug-and-play consoles. there's also a significant portion of this review extolling nintendo's countercultural original splatoon aesthetic that has been dampened in subsequent releases. personally I don't find any of these games particularly against the grain unless we're discussing it through the lens of the prior onslaught of modern warfare-era titles, which is a shaky ground to stand on considering in that case splatoon set the new standard and now suffers the proliferation of its copycats. punk? maybe pop punk... lord knows I had a steady diet of blink 182, alkaline trio, jeff rosenstock, pup, and screeching weasel back when I was playing splatoon 2 regularly. and isn't it more punk to deface clean hotels and malls in the name of artistic anarchy?
meeting those points at face-value means I'm getting lost in the smokescreen though, I need to dig deeper. because there are multiple valid mentions of this new entry lacking innovation, but they're nonsubstantial and swallowed by the rest of the remarks. this is understandable: it's hard to elaborate on features that don't exist. these are buoyed with remembrances of the earlier titles and how fresh they felt at release, contrasted with the stale aura of this new title. there's a general sense that something is wrong with this new game, right? it must be something new... but there's so little here that's actually new that it's hard to pinpoint. could it be the locker cosmetics and their associated "catalog" score, which scans as a battlepass in a post-fortnite world, or the new gachapon machine set up in the lobby? the former is entirely passive and totally free, so its only sin is just being cribbed from contemporaries, and the similar daily gacha is just an extension of that pernicious old ability chunk grind. what could possibly be that missing piece, that absent little bit of soul that the game lost between splatoon 2 and 3?
to me that answer is nothing. I think that line of inquiry is a dead end. my actual opinion? splatoon 3 feel bleh because splatoon 2 (and probably by extension splatoon 1) felt bleh. they're the same game!! I have returned to the well of squid kid bliss and instead am left wondering how eight years into this franchise I am still left without a way to alter my loadout, or play on more than two maps in a given mode at a time, or properly choose which ranked mode I want to play without having to wait for the choices to rotate every two hours! there are reasons these restrictions were originally set up, such as a limited initial set of stages for splatoon 1 or the need to make sure that ranked has a short matchmaking time, but there are other avenues to pursuing these aims that don't come at the expense of player choice and freedom of expression. I just want to use aerospray without getting trapped with these goddamn fizzy bombs, these fucking things that not only need to be cooked to make any impact but even then stil pale in comparison to virtually every other subweapon. could I please get a special that isn't reefslider as well? could I perhaps at least get to avoid playing on a stage that doesn't have walls that make reefslider glitch out near them? or at least could I not have to play on mahi mahi resort like five times in a row?
which is not to say there aren't minor QoL additions that perhaps alone make splatoon 3 marginally more playable than splatoon 2. the addition of a physical lobby where you can practice between rounds feels more engaging than the menus of the prior games, and thank god that I can finally make a room for my friends rather than messing with the awkward drop-in system. at the same time however, nintendo seems to be floundering a bit in terms of actually making substantial improvements to the game. in their stead, many changes have been made that seem to exist purely to justify the sequel status. sheldon, for instance, takes tickets now for weapons instead of money, which more closely ties his selection to your level progression I suppose? at the same time you still cannot truly skip his obnoxious spiel every time you set foot in his shop, so it might as well not have not been a change at all. the way that ranks for ranked mode are maintained now consist of a universal rank instead of individual ranks for each mode with the tradeoff of individual losses counting much less. perhaps there was a calculated reason for this change, but it ultimately makes me favor avoiding ranked modes which I'm particularly bad at such as tower control due to retaining my overall rank from my preferred modes such as splat zones. these are all side-steps to existing mechanics without being solutions to issues, and they hurt my impression of the game.
I must stress that I do like the overall design of splatoon, regardless of the nitpicks above. the way that refilling ink encourages traversal and the way that turf war flips typical PvP interactions on their head (running is often a viable option!) makes the flow of each match visceral as you continually move from area to area in a mad dash for territory. this is why I sunk so many hours into splatoon 2 back when this concept was still so novel for me. however, this style of play also creates very momentum-heavy matches where the outcome of a match can feel certain only halfway through. walking through endless puddles of your opponents' ink, especially the closer it is to your home base, makes me feel dejected even if I manage to get a kill I'm happy with or make a substantial endgame push towards the opponents' lines. this is amplified by the meager rewards from a match loss; seeing those progression bars get a few sparing drops towards a new level after trying your hardest in a match makes me feel like I almost wasted my time playing. when not playing competitively and thrown in with random team members into a game that seems to tacitly encourage communication, I feel pushed away from participating for more than a few matches at a time, just like I did towards the end of splatoon 2's life.
this is something that really felt noticable for me after I recently tried out modern warfare 2's online beta on the advice of a friend. having not played CoD since middle school, I was shocked at how different the atmosphere was. unlike splatoon, modern CoD is enraptured by the current trends in shooters with its season-based structure and mountains of progression bars, but at the other end of it there's something still very personal and intimately fun waiting in store. getting a double or triple kill at all could keep me going through multiple fruitless deaths afterwards just from the giddiness of succeeding in a split-second interaction. overall team scores just didn't matter, as my personal performance and growth felt rewarded by the systems of the game. who has time to worry about teammate behavior when you're succeeding on your own terms? splatoon 3 makes efforts to rectify this issue with its per-match rewards to each player highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, but these seem to confer little outside of maybe influencing the rewards in an anarchy series. perhaps nintendo is trying to highlight competition and community, but in a game where you have absolutely no way to engage with your teammates before and after matches, the effort seems wasted. splatoon could potentially learn some tricks towards crafting a more efficient timewaster from its contemporaries instead of half-heartedly incorporating their progression systems.
this bears mentioning though: just how much of my enjoyment with CoD came with not engaging with the game for over a decade? has my critical perception been inadvertedly weighted towards the novelty of it in a way that I've lost with splatoon? and again, how much of my degredation of splatoon 3 comes from releasing after a shoddy couple of years for nintendo's public-facing wing? splatoon 3 sits in the middle of a pretty good lineup of switch titles, but in the time since the original hype has died down it's much easier to feel and hear the nervous whispers of those wondering what the hell is going on with tears of the kingdom's rollout rather than the basking in the glory of breath of the wild still fresh in everyone's minds. of course, even breath of the wild cribbed much from its open-world contemporaries, and even though I loved it at the time I can see the criticisms from those who weren't too dazzled to see through the brand recognition on top of it. so perhaps then, splatoon has just been another multiplayer shooter all along, and the light is just harsh enough now for us to call it what it is.
------------------
there is something behind that $60 price tag, and it's.... tableturf battle. this might have been the case if nintendo had bothered rolling out online multiplayer for it, but leave it to them to surprise in the oddest of ways. instead we get a brand new single-player mode that seems to derive more from octo expansion (note: I have not played it) than its direct predecessors for better or for worse. I played about sixty total levels including the three mid-game bosses but not including the crater or rocket levels.
splatoon 3 opts for more focused, puzzle-like level design over its predecessors, which were built around every potential loadout being used in every level. this entry opts for bespoke loadouts for each stage to maximize the amount of encounters it can build around those particular weapons. in a few cases this results in some really clever stage design (I'm thinking of the curling bomb stage towards the end of the game that focuses on tightly-aimed ricochets) but in most cases falls surprisingly flat. much of this is due to carrying over many enemies from the prior games with few updates. these octopi foes generally have extremely poor mobility options compared to the protagonist and generally wield highly-telegraphed projectiles that can be easily evaded, and this game in particular really struggles to emphasize its intended stage routes with how useless most of these enemies are. this is particularly noticable with how many basic cover configurations you'll fight enemies from that seem almost copy-pasted throughout the game. splatoon 2 has its own foibles (overly long, unfocused level design) but generally designed more interesting arenas with better escalation of conflict than 3 does. splatoon 3 has a tendency to lock down level progression into very pre-defined, "solvable" encounters that do not surprise the player when completed "correctly" and feel broken when subverted by obvious means. this could still be elevated if that escalation of conflict was engaging, but splatoon 3 tends to favor overloading each level with rote expressions of the player's toolkit before hinting at more thoughtful level designing past the final checkpoint. the curling bomb stage perfectly showcases what could have been the case for these levels, where initial simple ricochets build up into longer areas with movable walls, platformers, and adversarial inkers to navigate and plan around; it helps that for this level the solution space is purposefully wide and more daring solutions yield rewards.
the more explicit puzzle stages have a couple bangers as well (the pac-man level is particularly cool), but too many fall into common level design traps like long obstacle cycles to listlessly wait through or boring auto-scroller sections. I could understand trying to make these easily solvable to make sure everyone has access to the final areas, but in this mode virtually every level is optional, and I would've enjoyed seeing some more out-of-the-box puzzle ideas beyond just shooting targets with a particular weapon on an ink rail or simple rube goldberg contraptions. some of these are particularly frustrating; the one I have to highlight is the tennis level, where the angle of the player's camera behind the "net" sort of kills my depth perception in the void beyond where the targets are shot from, and the level ends with a block that taps the net and never makes it into your play area as some sort of sophomoric joke to force you to replay another minute of scripted tennis target shots. bleh. just less than what I would expect from nintendo in terms of design finesse.
bosses are fine, but the standout is definitely the area six one. probably the most explicit reference we've seen yet to another game that dealt with cleaning up someone else's ink...
I'd really love to get better and enjoy this series but jesus christ Nintendo servers won't even let me finish a match! I just wanna play the game ;-;
I get launch day severs and such but good lord -_-
I get launch day severs and such but good lord -_-
Multiplayer and Salmron Run are more refined and polished as well, and with the card mode and other QOL. The story mode is actually fucking incredible this time around (better than Octo Expansion, I said it) I highly suggest you go in blind. With updates and confirmed story DLC (with everyone's favourite lesbians) Nintendo has proven to us once again that they can make fun and exciting IPs.
Nintendo make me your bitch.
Nintendo make me your bitch.
Splatoon is something ive been into since its debut on the Wii U, and as a series it has always been very innovative and stylish. The world and its single-player campaign are consistently good throughout each of the three titles, and i believe they're all worth playing just for that.
I want to talk about the multiplayer modes however, because splatoon 3 feels so horribly designed that every time i play i cant help but notice.
First off, its a multiplayer game. So its very hard to prevent bad and uneven matches from happening completely, and one would expect them to happen occassionally. But with splatoon 3, i feel like either you crush someones ass or they crush yours, very rarely do i feel satisfied after losing because more likely than not i was getting camped at the spawn the either time, unable to do anything.
There are several reasons for this. First off, the maps are so boring and horrendously designed. Many are just straight lines with an interconnected point in the middle. Moray Towers and Camp Cuddlefish nowhere to be seen; most maps are nearly identical. Mahi Mahi resort even has the gall to barely have any ground in a game, where the goal is.... to ink the ground. I feel like theyve lost sight of what made splatoon special. Unlike most shooters, you dont have to be good at pvp to assist your team in a match, as long as youre putting ink on the ground or advancing the objective you are contributing to the game. However, because of the way the maps are laid out it makes it virtually impossible to not just focus on pvp. There are no open ends here, no routes to flank a team from behind. Its pretty much just keep running into the other team till you die, and if theyre better than you then you lose. As a sidenote on maps, shifty stations or another gimmick has failed to present itself so splatfests feel very repetitive and not as eventful
This in contribution with another issue makes playing these maps fucking horrible, and thats of course the dominance of long ranged weapons. Because everything is either a square or a straight line, there is absolutely no reason why you cant just stand very far away and shoot at people where the other person's weapons cant reach. If you try to go up to them to engage in a close ranged fight, which is supposed to be their weakness, 3 other players will materialize out of thin air and put you down immediately. It doesnt feel fair and its obviously not fun to lose when you feel like you could absolutely not help it.
Matchmaking is an issue too. I feel like this games way of making sure players with even skill levels get to play with each other is absolutely dated and doesnt work whatsoever. For example, during splatfests there is no option to play ranked and everyone is put together to play turf, so all those diehard weirdos come out of the cracks and make sure you have as little fun as possible. Turf in splatoon 2 used to be a safe zone where you could just zone out and focus on inking the floor, but in 3 everything is a live or die competition and its incredibly wearing. Again, thats not what makes splatoon splatoon
Salmon run is by far my favorite mode but its also hindered by completely dated ways of keeping track of how good you are at it. No matter how well you may do in a match, this is cast aside because if you have 1 bad teammate at higher levels it is pretty much over. If you die in round 1 you are heavily penalized, if this happens a few times at the start of a rotation youre docked back down to a lower rank. Then again, its also feasible to get carried to ranks you should not be in with a couple of lucky matches. its nearly impossible to get out the lower ranks because its filled with people who shouldn't be there, and dont know how to play the video game. It also resets your rank at the start of the rotation, so even if youre at maxVP the game sees fit to whack you back doen to 40 where youre at risk of losing capable teammates due to something you cant control.
Back to normal multiplayer, i stated before that long ranged weapons get away with a lot but i feel like theres also a clear hierarchy of weapons, unless youre an abnormally good player. I feel like ive elaborated on the superiority of long ranged weapons, but blasters also just let you shoot literally anywhere and still hit people. Specials are absolutely broken beyond all belief. I play tetra dualies, and it is so ridiculously unfair that theres a special that makes you invincible and huge and you can splat anyone who touches you, but my stupid little reef slider is vulnerable the whole time and theres a clear mark on where im going to land so everyone can shoot at me when its over. I feel like my tetras cant aim whatsoever but everyone else is absolutely locked onto me. I dont know what theyre doing and i dont care, i just want to have fun.
The game attempts to be friendly for children on one hand but then adds several elements that encourages highly competitive and aggressive playstyles. I definitely got very mad at the previous games but it was never as consistently as this. I feel as if this is reflective in the playerbase as well, as they seem definitively more meanspirited and stupid as compared to what i remember of 2 and 1. If the players just controlled themselves a little this game could be better, but from what i am seeing of the plaza posts that tend to grace my eyes, i dont think anyone is working with all that much up there.
Theres more issues, like how slow the updates come out and how you cant block certain plaza posts, but these are the ones that make the experince most miserable to me. Just normal dated nintendo garbage ruining what was otherwise a very fun, happy, and unique game.
Also, as an edit to my review: splatfests are the worst they have ever, ever been. Constant mirror matches, especially during tri color which is also a mess, and a seemingly jacked system where Shiver is going to win every time. The prompts are typically terrible as well. Just awful to experience in general.
I want to talk about the multiplayer modes however, because splatoon 3 feels so horribly designed that every time i play i cant help but notice.
First off, its a multiplayer game. So its very hard to prevent bad and uneven matches from happening completely, and one would expect them to happen occassionally. But with splatoon 3, i feel like either you crush someones ass or they crush yours, very rarely do i feel satisfied after losing because more likely than not i was getting camped at the spawn the either time, unable to do anything.
There are several reasons for this. First off, the maps are so boring and horrendously designed. Many are just straight lines with an interconnected point in the middle. Moray Towers and Camp Cuddlefish nowhere to be seen; most maps are nearly identical. Mahi Mahi resort even has the gall to barely have any ground in a game, where the goal is.... to ink the ground. I feel like theyve lost sight of what made splatoon special. Unlike most shooters, you dont have to be good at pvp to assist your team in a match, as long as youre putting ink on the ground or advancing the objective you are contributing to the game. However, because of the way the maps are laid out it makes it virtually impossible to not just focus on pvp. There are no open ends here, no routes to flank a team from behind. Its pretty much just keep running into the other team till you die, and if theyre better than you then you lose. As a sidenote on maps, shifty stations or another gimmick has failed to present itself so splatfests feel very repetitive and not as eventful
This in contribution with another issue makes playing these maps fucking horrible, and thats of course the dominance of long ranged weapons. Because everything is either a square or a straight line, there is absolutely no reason why you cant just stand very far away and shoot at people where the other person's weapons cant reach. If you try to go up to them to engage in a close ranged fight, which is supposed to be their weakness, 3 other players will materialize out of thin air and put you down immediately. It doesnt feel fair and its obviously not fun to lose when you feel like you could absolutely not help it.
Matchmaking is an issue too. I feel like this games way of making sure players with even skill levels get to play with each other is absolutely dated and doesnt work whatsoever. For example, during splatfests there is no option to play ranked and everyone is put together to play turf, so all those diehard weirdos come out of the cracks and make sure you have as little fun as possible. Turf in splatoon 2 used to be a safe zone where you could just zone out and focus on inking the floor, but in 3 everything is a live or die competition and its incredibly wearing. Again, thats not what makes splatoon splatoon
Salmon run is by far my favorite mode but its also hindered by completely dated ways of keeping track of how good you are at it. No matter how well you may do in a match, this is cast aside because if you have 1 bad teammate at higher levels it is pretty much over. If you die in round 1 you are heavily penalized, if this happens a few times at the start of a rotation youre docked back down to a lower rank. Then again, its also feasible to get carried to ranks you should not be in with a couple of lucky matches. its nearly impossible to get out the lower ranks because its filled with people who shouldn't be there, and dont know how to play the video game. It also resets your rank at the start of the rotation, so even if youre at maxVP the game sees fit to whack you back doen to 40 where youre at risk of losing capable teammates due to something you cant control.
Back to normal multiplayer, i stated before that long ranged weapons get away with a lot but i feel like theres also a clear hierarchy of weapons, unless youre an abnormally good player. I feel like ive elaborated on the superiority of long ranged weapons, but blasters also just let you shoot literally anywhere and still hit people. Specials are absolutely broken beyond all belief. I play tetra dualies, and it is so ridiculously unfair that theres a special that makes you invincible and huge and you can splat anyone who touches you, but my stupid little reef slider is vulnerable the whole time and theres a clear mark on where im going to land so everyone can shoot at me when its over. I feel like my tetras cant aim whatsoever but everyone else is absolutely locked onto me. I dont know what theyre doing and i dont care, i just want to have fun.
The game attempts to be friendly for children on one hand but then adds several elements that encourages highly competitive and aggressive playstyles. I definitely got very mad at the previous games but it was never as consistently as this. I feel as if this is reflective in the playerbase as well, as they seem definitively more meanspirited and stupid as compared to what i remember of 2 and 1. If the players just controlled themselves a little this game could be better, but from what i am seeing of the plaza posts that tend to grace my eyes, i dont think anyone is working with all that much up there.
Theres more issues, like how slow the updates come out and how you cant block certain plaza posts, but these are the ones that make the experince most miserable to me. Just normal dated nintendo garbage ruining what was otherwise a very fun, happy, and unique game.
Also, as an edit to my review: splatfests are the worst they have ever, ever been. Constant mirror matches, especially during tri color which is also a mess, and a seemingly jacked system where Shiver is going to win every time. The prompts are typically terrible as well. Just awful to experience in general.
Big Man saves this game
i lost ultra boss for this
SPLATOON 3 - YEAR ONE REPORT
There's probably no game that I'm more "into" than Splatoon. There's games I like more, things that have been and gone, but Splatoon is its own scene. A subculture, and a massive push of energy from a new generation of remarkably talented Nintendo devs. Building on the lessons taught by the Marios and Zeldas, but it's a socially conscious online shooter that embraces new players. I love that while other monolithic multiplayer icons were collaborating with movie studios to promote a new release, Splatoon was collaborating with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, to encourage fans to take interest in the real-life species of aquatic creatures that the games take inspiration from. It's also a refreshingly progressive title from a safe, Japanese family brand like Nintendo, with its embrace of street art, Octo Expansion's overt anti-racist themes, and 3's abandonment of gender classes. It's quite encouraging to see how much a young queer fanbase have adopted the game as a positive community, in contrast to hostile, masculine spaces like Call of Duty and Gears of War. I think it does a great job of representing contemporary Japanese pop culture too, showcasing regional pop idols as fun, positive icons that fans can bond over, and not the icky, fetishised exploitees that the west tends to view them as. There's just a lot that Splatoon does that I think is really cool, and I'm consistently supportive of it.
It's a shame then that Splatoon 3 doesn't really seem to have as much of a voice as the previous titles. The energy seems to have diminished somewhat. Whether through complications with the pandemic, a less experimental, more efficient design structure, or developer burnout, I don't get as much sense of direction with the new game. Map designs seem reined-in and conservative in their approach, while previous games were introducing new mechanics and distinct playstyles with each new drop. Deep Cut haven't had the same impact as the Squid Sisters or Off the Hook, with the game's DLC allowing oldheads (me) to regress into Splatoon 1's Inkopolis lobby, largely ignoring the direction of the new title. New seasons bring back maps from previous titles, many of them from Splatoon 2, which players could access just as easily on their Nintendo Switch already. It just seems to have plateaued. Splatoon isn't pushing at the boundaries anymore. They're digging up nostalgia for games that came out a few years ago.
I don't think it's dead, though. There's encouraging signs that Splatoon 3 is still just finding its shape. Deep Cut's three-piece presents a fundamentally different dynamic from what's come before, presented as petty, bickering bumpkins from a smaller town, and it's great to see how that's been incorporated into their new track, Big Betrayal (their biggest banger so far). Their disappointingly restrained performance at Nintendo Live 2022 seems to be behind them, and I think their next concert could be a lot of fun. At time of writing, Deep Cut's Splatfest is currently in session, with the winning member seemingly becoming the leader of the group. I want them to stick to whatever the result is, and I think it would be a lot of fun to see Shiver's resentment if she has to take orders from either of the other two. While I moan about how relatively regressive 3 has been, I will die a hardcore Squid Sisters devotee, and it's been great to see how much the new game has catered for those who got invested in Callie's disappearance before 2's release. I want the series to continue to present them as the icons who started all this, and 3 has largely been following the trajectory I'd hoped to see, in that regard.
I just feel very precious about Splatoon. There was a time when each new development felt like a step into the future. How exciting it was when Camp Triggerfish first dropped, with its multiple base territories converging in central hot zone. Even as a Team Order voter, I feel concerned about Side Order's revisionist theme, turning its back on the significance of Splatfest results. If we were going to see both the Chaos and Order timelines anyway, what was the point in taking part in the Final Fest? It doesn't seem like the kind of move Splatoon 1 would have made.
Splatoon 3 is still the best place to play Splatoon today. The pre-match practice lobby and skippable Anarchy Splatcasts make it a much more inviting option on your Switch's home menu, and the active season rewards keep active players invested in returning regularly. It just doesn't feel like we've really got the game it's supposed to be yet. It's safe, and that's not something I value in Splatoon. I want them to see the big swings, and weird experiments without worrying about the impact to its established playerbase. I know a lot of people who bought it at release, and I think I'm the only one who hasn't dropped off playing it regularly. I know what this team can do. I'm telling them now's the time to do it.
There's probably no game that I'm more "into" than Splatoon. There's games I like more, things that have been and gone, but Splatoon is its own scene. A subculture, and a massive push of energy from a new generation of remarkably talented Nintendo devs. Building on the lessons taught by the Marios and Zeldas, but it's a socially conscious online shooter that embraces new players. I love that while other monolithic multiplayer icons were collaborating with movie studios to promote a new release, Splatoon was collaborating with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, to encourage fans to take interest in the real-life species of aquatic creatures that the games take inspiration from. It's also a refreshingly progressive title from a safe, Japanese family brand like Nintendo, with its embrace of street art, Octo Expansion's overt anti-racist themes, and 3's abandonment of gender classes. It's quite encouraging to see how much a young queer fanbase have adopted the game as a positive community, in contrast to hostile, masculine spaces like Call of Duty and Gears of War. I think it does a great job of representing contemporary Japanese pop culture too, showcasing regional pop idols as fun, positive icons that fans can bond over, and not the icky, fetishised exploitees that the west tends to view them as. There's just a lot that Splatoon does that I think is really cool, and I'm consistently supportive of it.
It's a shame then that Splatoon 3 doesn't really seem to have as much of a voice as the previous titles. The energy seems to have diminished somewhat. Whether through complications with the pandemic, a less experimental, more efficient design structure, or developer burnout, I don't get as much sense of direction with the new game. Map designs seem reined-in and conservative in their approach, while previous games were introducing new mechanics and distinct playstyles with each new drop. Deep Cut haven't had the same impact as the Squid Sisters or Off the Hook, with the game's DLC allowing oldheads (me) to regress into Splatoon 1's Inkopolis lobby, largely ignoring the direction of the new title. New seasons bring back maps from previous titles, many of them from Splatoon 2, which players could access just as easily on their Nintendo Switch already. It just seems to have plateaued. Splatoon isn't pushing at the boundaries anymore. They're digging up nostalgia for games that came out a few years ago.
I don't think it's dead, though. There's encouraging signs that Splatoon 3 is still just finding its shape. Deep Cut's three-piece presents a fundamentally different dynamic from what's come before, presented as petty, bickering bumpkins from a smaller town, and it's great to see how that's been incorporated into their new track, Big Betrayal (their biggest banger so far). Their disappointingly restrained performance at Nintendo Live 2022 seems to be behind them, and I think their next concert could be a lot of fun. At time of writing, Deep Cut's Splatfest is currently in session, with the winning member seemingly becoming the leader of the group. I want them to stick to whatever the result is, and I think it would be a lot of fun to see Shiver's resentment if she has to take orders from either of the other two. While I moan about how relatively regressive 3 has been, I will die a hardcore Squid Sisters devotee, and it's been great to see how much the new game has catered for those who got invested in Callie's disappearance before 2's release. I want the series to continue to present them as the icons who started all this, and 3 has largely been following the trajectory I'd hoped to see, in that regard.
I just feel very precious about Splatoon. There was a time when each new development felt like a step into the future. How exciting it was when Camp Triggerfish first dropped, with its multiple base territories converging in central hot zone. Even as a Team Order voter, I feel concerned about Side Order's revisionist theme, turning its back on the significance of Splatfest results. If we were going to see both the Chaos and Order timelines anyway, what was the point in taking part in the Final Fest? It doesn't seem like the kind of move Splatoon 1 would have made.
Splatoon 3 is still the best place to play Splatoon today. The pre-match practice lobby and skippable Anarchy Splatcasts make it a much more inviting option on your Switch's home menu, and the active season rewards keep active players invested in returning regularly. It just doesn't feel like we've really got the game it's supposed to be yet. It's safe, and that's not something I value in Splatoon. I want them to see the big swings, and weird experiments without worrying about the impact to its established playerbase. I know a lot of people who bought it at release, and I think I'm the only one who hasn't dropped off playing it regularly. I know what this team can do. I'm telling them now's the time to do it.
the real splatfest is between whether or not i'll see more softcore bara furry porn or softcore foot porn in the plaza
I play turf war, I have fun.
I play the single player, I have fun.
I play salmon run, I have fun.
It simply delivers every way you turn.
There is certainly a push and pull between "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and "have I paid 60 clams to skip Deep Cut reading the news instead of skipping Off the Hook reading the news?" but hell, it's all good, it's all solid, and I'm still delighted whenever the Squid Sisters show up and do or say absolutely anything.
Fingers crossed the DLC (no I'm not wild about the fact that paid DLC was announced before the game released) can escape the trappings of a glorified weapons tutorial. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed single player very much, and I fully understand why it's the way it is, but I'm ready for levels that deliver the true potential of the platforming, rather than re-re-reintroducing me to the splat roller. We've met!
I play the single player, I have fun.
I play salmon run, I have fun.
It simply delivers every way you turn.
There is certainly a push and pull between "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and "have I paid 60 clams to skip Deep Cut reading the news instead of skipping Off the Hook reading the news?" but hell, it's all good, it's all solid, and I'm still delighted whenever the Squid Sisters show up and do or say absolutely anything.
Fingers crossed the DLC (no I'm not wild about the fact that paid DLC was announced before the game released) can escape the trappings of a glorified weapons tutorial. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed single player very much, and I fully understand why it's the way it is, but I'm ready for levels that deliver the true potential of the platforming, rather than re-re-reintroducing me to the splat roller. We've met!
Right off the bat this is the most solid Splatoon has been in just about every regard; crazy to think there will likely be years of updates to keep us coming with steady release of new maps and weapons. I can't say Splatoon 3 really shakes up a lot from previous entries. If you liked one Splatoon game, you'll probably like them all; and same logic applies if you never cared for the franchise in the first place. Maps, modes, and Salmon Run all feature great quality of life changes that make them just a bit more solid than their Splatoon 2 counterparts with weapons/specials being much more balanced than in Splatoon 1 and the map selection already being more interesting than Splatoon 2. Campaign takes a lot from Octo Expansion in both its structure and challenge. Genuinely don't have too much to say. Just a very fun shooter that I'm excited to see where it goes in the future.
I know everyone's saying it's just more of the same but this was my first splatoon so I just got my world turned upside down. This game is unreasonably fun. Can't believe they made a shooter for gay people
REVIEW REFLECTS SINGLE-PLAYER CAMPAIGN ONLY
NOT REFLECTIVE OF FULL GAME
NO EXPLICIT STORY SPOILERS, BUT SOME FOCUS ON THE GAME'S STRUCTURE, FOCUS AND THEMES THAT I DIDN'T WANT REVEALED TO ME BEFORE I PLAYED IT, SO PLEASE AVOID IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED IT AND YOU'RE SENSITIVE TO THESE THINGS
After Octo Expansion, I was really excited about what the single-player in the next Splatoon would be. There was a bunch of familiar challenge missions, but at the end of it, there was a long sequence that showed how Splatoon's gameplay, music and setting could be applied to a structure more similar to Resident Evil 4 or Portal. It worked so well, I was sure that this was going to be the immediate future of Splatoon - A game that split its focus equally between an established top-tier multiplayer shooter and a fantastic single-player campaign to stand proudly alongside Mario and Zelda.
Splatoon 3's campaign is very much built off the back of Octo Expansion, but not in the way I'd hoped. It's understandable, but this is largely Octo Expansion 2, but with more of a focus towards players who are trying Splatoon for the first time, as opposed to the hardcore fans who bought the DLC.
There are some really good ideas here, though a lot of the time it's playing the old Splatoon balancing act of tutorials/MGS VR Missions. The utility of new weapons and specials are explored in fun levels that really show off their potential, and that Spider-Man one (I'm not familiar enough with the names of new Splatoon 3 stuff yet, sorry) is really good for vertical platforming. I'm not sure they've really given a good reason to ever use the Squid Boost thing in regular Splatooning, but I guess it's not doing anybody any harm.
I'll try to get over what it isn't, and appreciate it for what it is, and there is good here. They really throw a bone to Splatoon 1 fans here, especially at the start. The direct references are so baked into the story that there's a good deal that will go over your head if you've never had the delight of being a Wii U owner (or a GameCube owner, for that matter).
I think they do a good job of introducing new characters, while still establishing that The Squid Sisters are the toppermost of the poppermost. Really well balanced, and I felt overwhelmingly encouraged whenever Callie or Marie complimented how good I was at playing Splatoon. Having the old Agent 3 be their new Captain is a big play to Splatoon 1 fans, who get to point at the screen and say "that's me!"
The tone is pretty light throughout, though the dark backstory is explored in the Alterna Logs, and presented in a way that young players probably won't bother reading them. It's a bit of a let down that a Splatoon game dealing with the threat of an extinction event has fewer fucked up things in it than the new Kirby.
All in all, it's a fun new mode with a lot of things to dig into and enjoy. Not really what I'd hoped for, but there's enough in there to appeal to me, specifically, as an individual, that I worry I'd seem ungrateful if I moaned about it too much. I really hope they just stretch the last hour as the format for the whole of the next one though.
NOT REFLECTIVE OF FULL GAME
NO EXPLICIT STORY SPOILERS, BUT SOME FOCUS ON THE GAME'S STRUCTURE, FOCUS AND THEMES THAT I DIDN'T WANT REVEALED TO ME BEFORE I PLAYED IT, SO PLEASE AVOID IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED IT AND YOU'RE SENSITIVE TO THESE THINGS
After Octo Expansion, I was really excited about what the single-player in the next Splatoon would be. There was a bunch of familiar challenge missions, but at the end of it, there was a long sequence that showed how Splatoon's gameplay, music and setting could be applied to a structure more similar to Resident Evil 4 or Portal. It worked so well, I was sure that this was going to be the immediate future of Splatoon - A game that split its focus equally between an established top-tier multiplayer shooter and a fantastic single-player campaign to stand proudly alongside Mario and Zelda.
Splatoon 3's campaign is very much built off the back of Octo Expansion, but not in the way I'd hoped. It's understandable, but this is largely Octo Expansion 2, but with more of a focus towards players who are trying Splatoon for the first time, as opposed to the hardcore fans who bought the DLC.
There are some really good ideas here, though a lot of the time it's playing the old Splatoon balancing act of tutorials/MGS VR Missions. The utility of new weapons and specials are explored in fun levels that really show off their potential, and that Spider-Man one (I'm not familiar enough with the names of new Splatoon 3 stuff yet, sorry) is really good for vertical platforming. I'm not sure they've really given a good reason to ever use the Squid Boost thing in regular Splatooning, but I guess it's not doing anybody any harm.
I'll try to get over what it isn't, and appreciate it for what it is, and there is good here. They really throw a bone to Splatoon 1 fans here, especially at the start. The direct references are so baked into the story that there's a good deal that will go over your head if you've never had the delight of being a Wii U owner (or a GameCube owner, for that matter).
I think they do a good job of introducing new characters, while still establishing that The Squid Sisters are the toppermost of the poppermost. Really well balanced, and I felt overwhelmingly encouraged whenever Callie or Marie complimented how good I was at playing Splatoon. Having the old Agent 3 be their new Captain is a big play to Splatoon 1 fans, who get to point at the screen and say "that's me!"
The tone is pretty light throughout, though the dark backstory is explored in the Alterna Logs, and presented in a way that young players probably won't bother reading them. It's a bit of a let down that a Splatoon game dealing with the threat of an extinction event has fewer fucked up things in it than the new Kirby.
All in all, it's a fun new mode with a lot of things to dig into and enjoy. Not really what I'd hoped for, but there's enough in there to appeal to me, specifically, as an individual, that I worry I'd seem ungrateful if I moaned about it too much. I really hope they just stretch the last hour as the format for the whole of the next one though.
Splatoon 3 is more Splatoon. That's it.
Is this the best version of Splatoon? Yeah
Does it add anything new or groundbreaking to the series? Absolutely not.
If you've never played Splatoon and you've always been curious, Splatoon 3 is the perfect place to jump in.
If you're a seasoned Splatoon player who just loves Splatoon and wants more. You will probably be thrilled with More Splatoon and will really appreciate the quality of life improvements they've made to the game.
However, if you are like me, and you were looking for a full, proper sequel to Splatoon 2 the way Nintendo usually does sequels, this ain't it. This is more similar to an annual Call of Duty release with some incremental improvements. It's got a new campaign, new MP maps, new guns, new outfits, and some quality of life improvements like matchmaking with friends (finally). But at its core, Splatoon 3 it's the same game as the games before it.
Splatoon was one of my favorite games on the Wii U. And when Splatoon 2 came out on Switch, I was delighted to have it on a new platform with some new modes to play. I put probably a couple hundred hours into those games combined. So when Splatoon 3 came out and it was just more of what I've already spent 200+ hours doing, I fell off pretty quickly. I finished the campaign, played some multiplayer, did Salmon Run, and tried the boring new card game, but I've already spent dozens of hours ranking up in multiplayer to get cool new outfits with the last two games. It's the same exact gameplay loop as before, and honestly, I'm good.
Even with the improvements they made to the game's multiplayer and other systems, the game still has Nintendo's baffling internet connectivity design. Multiple activities in the game require an internet connection, but the only place you can actually connect to the internet is the Multiplayer Lobby. So, if you load into Salmon Run offline, the game will instruct you that you need to be online to play. Instead of just simply connecting you to the internet then and there, you have to quit out of Salmon Run, go back to the Lobby, connect to the internet, and then go back to Salmon Run. Wild.
I've always thought Splatoon's campaigns were pretty underrated. Most folks ignored them and just played the multiplayer, but I've always really loved the single player content. This one hooked me quickly and I was having a blast, but it didn't take long for that excitement to wear off. The environments are boring, the gimmicks got stale, and the story is lacking.
Overall, Splatoon 3 is a solid game. It's not bad, I've just played it before.
+ Welcome quality of life improvements like matchmaking with friends
+ Overall multiplayer has been improved
+ Fun new characters
+ Some solid new maps, fun new weapons, and more ways to customize your squid kid
- It's the same game as Splatoon 2
- Single-player campaign gets stale quickly and relies heavily on gimmicks like bad on-rails levels
- Classic Nintendo terrible internet connectivity design
Is this the best version of Splatoon? Yeah
Does it add anything new or groundbreaking to the series? Absolutely not.
If you've never played Splatoon and you've always been curious, Splatoon 3 is the perfect place to jump in.
If you're a seasoned Splatoon player who just loves Splatoon and wants more. You will probably be thrilled with More Splatoon and will really appreciate the quality of life improvements they've made to the game.
However, if you are like me, and you were looking for a full, proper sequel to Splatoon 2 the way Nintendo usually does sequels, this ain't it. This is more similar to an annual Call of Duty release with some incremental improvements. It's got a new campaign, new MP maps, new guns, new outfits, and some quality of life improvements like matchmaking with friends (finally). But at its core, Splatoon 3 it's the same game as the games before it.
Splatoon was one of my favorite games on the Wii U. And when Splatoon 2 came out on Switch, I was delighted to have it on a new platform with some new modes to play. I put probably a couple hundred hours into those games combined. So when Splatoon 3 came out and it was just more of what I've already spent 200+ hours doing, I fell off pretty quickly. I finished the campaign, played some multiplayer, did Salmon Run, and tried the boring new card game, but I've already spent dozens of hours ranking up in multiplayer to get cool new outfits with the last two games. It's the same exact gameplay loop as before, and honestly, I'm good.
Even with the improvements they made to the game's multiplayer and other systems, the game still has Nintendo's baffling internet connectivity design. Multiple activities in the game require an internet connection, but the only place you can actually connect to the internet is the Multiplayer Lobby. So, if you load into Salmon Run offline, the game will instruct you that you need to be online to play. Instead of just simply connecting you to the internet then and there, you have to quit out of Salmon Run, go back to the Lobby, connect to the internet, and then go back to Salmon Run. Wild.
I've always thought Splatoon's campaigns were pretty underrated. Most folks ignored them and just played the multiplayer, but I've always really loved the single player content. This one hooked me quickly and I was having a blast, but it didn't take long for that excitement to wear off. The environments are boring, the gimmicks got stale, and the story is lacking.
Overall, Splatoon 3 is a solid game. It's not bad, I've just played it before.
+ Welcome quality of life improvements like matchmaking with friends
+ Overall multiplayer has been improved
+ Fun new characters
+ Some solid new maps, fun new weapons, and more ways to customize your squid kid
- It's the same game as Splatoon 2
- Single-player campaign gets stale quickly and relies heavily on gimmicks like bad on-rails levels
- Classic Nintendo terrible internet connectivity design
splatoon 3 is fucking awesome. it is the most polished splatoon entry in the franchise, having a great story mode, the most balanced multiplayer experience thus far, permanent salmon run, looks great, and other qol features.
but you know what? every minute i spend playing this game, i go "you know im having a great time, but this is incredibly similar to splatoon 2... which was already very similar to splatoon 1... so why did i pay $60 for this?" and the reality is that i legitimately cannot come up with a good reason other than the fact that my friends bought it.
the game in a vacuum is amazing but it is so safe in it's "innovations" that i almost feel like its insulting to the word to call the new features innovative. the gameplay is fundamentally the same, however you have two new squid abilities and two new weapon types. you now have a usuable lobby instead of a shitty loading screen that would make you want to gouge your eyes out. you have a new campaign, and you have a new gacha card game you can play in the hub and uh... you can play salmon run all the time instead of whenever the game feels like you should be able to. and honestly, that is 90% of the game's changes from 2 to 3. i am not joking. changes that basically every other live service model game would serve as either dlc or a free update for an existing game are changes nintendo is charging their consumers $60 dollars for.
this is frankly insulting. im sure some people will go "uh well bubbles fifa madden and cod do the same thing" which is like, yes they do. however, those games' service models have been critisized in the gaming sphere for ages. second of all, the reality is that in the span those games are released and developed (1 year, maybe 2 or 3 in cod's case) making any truly innovative changes in a sequel should frankly be regarded as miraculous. in any case, the window between the release of splatoon 2 and 3 is 5 years, which i feel like is even worse. 5 years for the developers to realize "hey you know limiting salmon run to only whenever the fuck we want is a moronic, brainless, vacuous, slack jawed, knuckle dragging, sub 20 iq ass backwards dipshitted idea. we should charge the consumer $60 to have them be able to play it whenever." 5 years for the developers to go "hey the ink shield special is incredibly degenerate, horrible and ruins the balance of multiplayer that no one likes lets charge the consumer $60 to get rid of it" seriously suck my fucking dick. these changes are not innovations that warrant a sequel; and if they did, certainly not $60.
but im a fucking thumb sucker, so ill continue to shit my fucking diapy and play splatoon 3. because it is a fucking FUN game. nearly a 10/10 game wise but man fuck you nintendo.
but you know what? every minute i spend playing this game, i go "you know im having a great time, but this is incredibly similar to splatoon 2... which was already very similar to splatoon 1... so why did i pay $60 for this?" and the reality is that i legitimately cannot come up with a good reason other than the fact that my friends bought it.
the game in a vacuum is amazing but it is so safe in it's "innovations" that i almost feel like its insulting to the word to call the new features innovative. the gameplay is fundamentally the same, however you have two new squid abilities and two new weapon types. you now have a usuable lobby instead of a shitty loading screen that would make you want to gouge your eyes out. you have a new campaign, and you have a new gacha card game you can play in the hub and uh... you can play salmon run all the time instead of whenever the game feels like you should be able to. and honestly, that is 90% of the game's changes from 2 to 3. i am not joking. changes that basically every other live service model game would serve as either dlc or a free update for an existing game are changes nintendo is charging their consumers $60 dollars for.
this is frankly insulting. im sure some people will go "uh well bubbles fifa madden and cod do the same thing" which is like, yes they do. however, those games' service models have been critisized in the gaming sphere for ages. second of all, the reality is that in the span those games are released and developed (1 year, maybe 2 or 3 in cod's case) making any truly innovative changes in a sequel should frankly be regarded as miraculous. in any case, the window between the release of splatoon 2 and 3 is 5 years, which i feel like is even worse. 5 years for the developers to realize "hey you know limiting salmon run to only whenever the fuck we want is a moronic, brainless, vacuous, slack jawed, knuckle dragging, sub 20 iq ass backwards dipshitted idea. we should charge the consumer $60 to have them be able to play it whenever." 5 years for the developers to go "hey the ink shield special is incredibly degenerate, horrible and ruins the balance of multiplayer that no one likes lets charge the consumer $60 to get rid of it" seriously suck my fucking dick. these changes are not innovations that warrant a sequel; and if they did, certainly not $60.
but im a fucking thumb sucker, so ill continue to shit my fucking diapy and play splatoon 3. because it is a fucking FUN game. nearly a 10/10 game wise but man fuck you nintendo.
Never played splatoon before and this was my first foray into it. This game is definitely most fun multiplayer but i am not that great at fps style games with a twin stick, i grew up playing these on K+M and competed on K+M. So whenever i have to play with controllers competitively, I can't but help think of what my potential is and it gets frustrating fast. As a result i tried to play campaign. There were some fun mechanics here but ultimately decided to stop playing. It was fun but just didnt hold me. Awesome music though!
a friend has complained to me about getting splatted by the sloshing machine and the bloblobber and i have to pretend to take that seriously
its more splatoon, but the single player is actually good now and they finally (after 7 years) figured out that its fun when youre able to play with your friends. holy shit. just ignore the communication errors. paid online service btw.
maybe i was just really burnt out when splatoon 2 dropped, as it hadnt been that long since the first game which id poured hundreds of hours into. but that game simply didnt grab me the way the first one did, and the way this has been doing. i cant stop playing, its summer 2015 all over again. i love how fucking stupid everything about this game is, the cheesy dialogue, the music going BEN BEN w/ the among us theme, getting spawn camped on mahi mahi because some genius decided it should have like 10cm^2 area now, getting tenta missiled by 3 flyfishes while waiting 10 years to do a roller flick because some genius decided the current salmon run rotation should have dynamo roller, trying to get the shades to sit on the moai head in your locker just right, keeping lil judd in your peripheral vision at all times after beating him in a childrens card game, etc etc
i dont want to be out here talking about how splatoon's core game design is genius or whatever because i dont actually play other shooters these days. likewise i dont want to be talking about how innovative this is because splatoon has gotten pretty comfortable now. 1 was the trailblazer 7 years ago, this is the third rodeo. ive already started seeing people unhappy that the word "splatoon" has gone from meaning "creative new weird wii u ip" to "hugely successful series that has started putting out entries that all look and play the same" which is fair really. maybe ill be more cynical when we get around to like splatoon 6 with idols called like Carol and Reefe ready to announce the single worst map rotation youve ever seen. as of right now its simply too fun and charming. now if youll excuse me i have to grind to level 98 so i can unlock the dab
maybe i was just really burnt out when splatoon 2 dropped, as it hadnt been that long since the first game which id poured hundreds of hours into. but that game simply didnt grab me the way the first one did, and the way this has been doing. i cant stop playing, its summer 2015 all over again. i love how fucking stupid everything about this game is, the cheesy dialogue, the music going BEN BEN w/ the among us theme, getting spawn camped on mahi mahi because some genius decided it should have like 10cm^2 area now, getting tenta missiled by 3 flyfishes while waiting 10 years to do a roller flick because some genius decided the current salmon run rotation should have dynamo roller, trying to get the shades to sit on the moai head in your locker just right, keeping lil judd in your peripheral vision at all times after beating him in a childrens card game, etc etc
i dont want to be out here talking about how splatoon's core game design is genius or whatever because i dont actually play other shooters these days. likewise i dont want to be talking about how innovative this is because splatoon has gotten pretty comfortable now. 1 was the trailblazer 7 years ago, this is the third rodeo. ive already started seeing people unhappy that the word "splatoon" has gone from meaning "creative new weird wii u ip" to "hugely successful series that has started putting out entries that all look and play the same" which is fair really. maybe ill be more cynical when we get around to like splatoon 6 with idols called like Carol and Reefe ready to announce the single worst map rotation youve ever seen. as of right now its simply too fun and charming. now if youll excuse me i have to grind to level 98 so i can unlock the dab
Mario Strikers and Nintendo Switch Sports were a bit of a blunder. But between this, Three Hopes, Xenoblade 3, Kirby, Live A Live, Triangle Strategy, Pokemon Legends... if Bayonetta 3 and Sparks of Hope are as good as they look this may just be the best year for nintendo yet. This game is a banger. All the good things about Splatoon 2 and the expansion but better.
Splatoon is a game that carries the idea of the rebellious teenager. A bunch of rowdy kids competing in hardball sports, making a mess of familiar places and loitering around the plaza space. Everything from the characters, music, clothing, branding and world were meant to reinforce this idea in Splatoon, back in 2015. Something that always irked me in Splatoon 2 is how it felt like this aesthetic was commodified. Splatoon 2 veers itself into feeling a lot more pro-consumerist, taking the player from Inkopolis Plaza to Inkopolis Square, an area more modern and more filled to the brim with advertising, making the centerpiece a literal tower of screens and billboards of ads. The new idols are multimillionaire pop superstars running a news station with sponsored ads (I’m sorry Pearl and Marina I just gotta prove a point I still love you). Smaller things reinforce this too, like the new stages occupying more professional and commercial spaces, and the UI elements being centered a lot on price tags and the like. I know it’s bizarre to criticize a Nintendo™ game as being too commercial, but compared to what came before it, Splatoon 2 feels a lot less rebellious throughout. It comes across as exemplifying punk and street culture in the same way a TikTok guy pretending to shoot people and say he’s an “alpha male” while dressed head to toe in expensive brand name clothing is punk. It’s not just less rebellious, it’s less intimate and it comes off colder than its predecessor.
Splatoon 3 works to recapture the essence of the series’ embrace of teen counterculture, encompassing itself under the idea of “chaos”. Divorcing itself from the comfortable modernity of Inkopolis, Splatoon 3 sees players off to the rougher, louder, densely packed streets of Splatsville. The Japanese names of these two cityscapes, Haikara City (Inkopolis) and Bankara Town (Splatsville) show this divide, as Haikara is a term used for Western fashion that arose in the late 19th century, implying a sense of high-collar fashion, something new and progressive but still professional in nature. Bankara is a term meant to encompass the reaction against this high-collar Western culture that's made its way through Japan, a way for younger generations to wildly and deliberately rebel from Haikara style.
Though “chaos” is Splatoon 3’s generalized mission statement, it’s shown in a way different from how other media would conceptualize chaos. It’s rougher, it’s dirtier, it’s louder, but it doesn’t ever go out of its way to be meaner. Splatoon 3 has an edge to it, but not one that means to harm. Chaos, in this game, is embraced as a city formed of the people who live in it, the warmth of their community and spirit. The new stages you visit are much less developed than the stages of previous games, consisting of abandoned spillways, desert gorges, and factories. These places find life in how the people of Splatsville have restored them as arenas to continue their sport, and the one outlier to this, Hagglefish Market, is a marketplace filled with individual vendors suspended over the sea with various small structures. Opposed to the previous game’s skyscrapers, concert halls, and hotel resorts filling out Inkopolis, the Splatlands’ new stages are much more humble, and make the turf wars taking place on them feel more home-grown.
Splatfests in Splatoon 3 are shown much less as professional, organized concerts and more as festivals, where the game’s idols go through the streets, each performing music home to the culture they represent, and people are scattered through the streets cheering and dancing. Just roaming the streets during the games previous Splatfest World Premiere gave a much more powerful sense of warmth and excitement than either of the two previous games.
Through the course of Splatoon 2, I was a bit worried about the future of the series. Something that embodied itself and built its identity in its sense of counterculture felt like it was slowly eeking towards a dulled sense of conformity as it made its home in Nintendo’s signature lineup. Even with it's lack of new gameplay innovation and a frankly underwhelming story mode, Splatoon 3 truly impressed me with how much it recaptures and succeeds what the original game set out for, forging its identity as still being something fresh and uniquely set apart from any of its contemporaries. I dread to imagine what a Team Order version of this game would be like.
Splatoon 3 works to recapture the essence of the series’ embrace of teen counterculture, encompassing itself under the idea of “chaos”. Divorcing itself from the comfortable modernity of Inkopolis, Splatoon 3 sees players off to the rougher, louder, densely packed streets of Splatsville. The Japanese names of these two cityscapes, Haikara City (Inkopolis) and Bankara Town (Splatsville) show this divide, as Haikara is a term used for Western fashion that arose in the late 19th century, implying a sense of high-collar fashion, something new and progressive but still professional in nature. Bankara is a term meant to encompass the reaction against this high-collar Western culture that's made its way through Japan, a way for younger generations to wildly and deliberately rebel from Haikara style.
Though “chaos” is Splatoon 3’s generalized mission statement, it’s shown in a way different from how other media would conceptualize chaos. It’s rougher, it’s dirtier, it’s louder, but it doesn’t ever go out of its way to be meaner. Splatoon 3 has an edge to it, but not one that means to harm. Chaos, in this game, is embraced as a city formed of the people who live in it, the warmth of their community and spirit. The new stages you visit are much less developed than the stages of previous games, consisting of abandoned spillways, desert gorges, and factories. These places find life in how the people of Splatsville have restored them as arenas to continue their sport, and the one outlier to this, Hagglefish Market, is a marketplace filled with individual vendors suspended over the sea with various small structures. Opposed to the previous game’s skyscrapers, concert halls, and hotel resorts filling out Inkopolis, the Splatlands’ new stages are much more humble, and make the turf wars taking place on them feel more home-grown.
Splatfests in Splatoon 3 are shown much less as professional, organized concerts and more as festivals, where the game’s idols go through the streets, each performing music home to the culture they represent, and people are scattered through the streets cheering and dancing. Just roaming the streets during the games previous Splatfest World Premiere gave a much more powerful sense of warmth and excitement than either of the two previous games.
Through the course of Splatoon 2, I was a bit worried about the future of the series. Something that embodied itself and built its identity in its sense of counterculture felt like it was slowly eeking towards a dulled sense of conformity as it made its home in Nintendo’s signature lineup. Even with it's lack of new gameplay innovation and a frankly underwhelming story mode, Splatoon 3 truly impressed me with how much it recaptures and succeeds what the original game set out for, forging its identity as still being something fresh and uniquely set apart from any of its contemporaries. I dread to imagine what a Team Order version of this game would be like.
WOOMY!!!!!!
GOTY 2021 & '22 - NUMBER 4
(Video version available here)
Splatoon 3 irritates me. In 2017, when Nintendo were backed into a corner and pulling out all the stops, we got Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey - two of the best games they've ever made. On top of that, we got Splatoon 2 - A bit of a compromised retread of the previous game, but that was fine, because this was the Switch now, and it was more exciting for the established fanbase to receive a sequel than an expanded port. Octo Expansion showed the fantastic directions the team were pushing out towards, and the next sequel would surely develop on that potential. Well, no, not quite.
Now Splatoon's at the top of the charts, what we've been presented with is largely a Quality of Life refresh. Getting everything presented nicely for the active community, but doing little to shake things up. The big takeaway from Octo Expansion's positive response seems to have been that people liked it, so let's do it again. Upon launch, Splatoon 3 became the fastest selling game in Japan ever, but it's one that I can't really recommend to those who bought the previous game, unless they were really, really into it. How many people have to buy Splatoon before Nintendo will let it get as good as their Marios and Zeldas?
Despite this, I love Splatoon 3. It feels a lot like buying into the Mario Kart 9 buzz at the announcement of each new Nintendo Direct for the last few years, and being met with retro track DLC for 8, but this is the best place to play Splatoon. The team have taken their experience from Animal Crossing: New Horizons and ensured that if you want to play Splatoon, there will always be a reason to. Beyond the Turf Wars and Ranked matches, there's now a permanently available Salmon Run, a Turf Wars-based card game, customisable lockers, season-long item catalogues and a whole bunch of cosmetic nonsense to tool about with. The gaps between online matches, which were given diverting little minigames in the first title, and basically nothing in the second, now allow you to practice your techniques and loadouts in a controlled environment. They're taking the idea of playing Splatoon well as seriously as Capcom do for Street Fighter.
This doesn't feel so much like The New Splatoon as our old friend, Splatoon, has moved to a new house. They haven't totally settled in yet, but there's clear advantages to living here, and a few of those things they had to give up in their last place are back. It's not as immediately impressive as Splatoon 2, but there's new potential here. That's part of the frustration of putting Splatoon games on these lists. They never rank as highly as my love for the games would suggest, but they're not all the way there in their first year. At the time of writing this, we've only had two new maps and a Big Run, and I can't judge it on the potential of nebulous upcoming content.
Have the developers become too complacent? That's the risk. I was happy to give Splatoon 2 a pass as a hasty emigration to a more promising platform, but I'm not sure 3 even has as much of a sense of identity as that game. Is this the fate of Splatoon fans? Making excuses for missed potential and abandoned initiatives? Are we the new Pokémon fans?
No - that's an absurd suggestion. I can only be this critical of Splatoon because I love it so dearly. And I believe in the potential. Splatoon 2 didn't launch with Octo Expansion. Splatoon 1 didn't launch with Camp Triggerfish. Hell, look at what this team launched the last couple of Animal Crossing games with, and what they turned into years later. Time and again, the mantra of 'the best is yet to come' has been proven correct. I only hope they want it as much as I do.
(Video version available here)
Splatoon 3 irritates me. In 2017, when Nintendo were backed into a corner and pulling out all the stops, we got Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey - two of the best games they've ever made. On top of that, we got Splatoon 2 - A bit of a compromised retread of the previous game, but that was fine, because this was the Switch now, and it was more exciting for the established fanbase to receive a sequel than an expanded port. Octo Expansion showed the fantastic directions the team were pushing out towards, and the next sequel would surely develop on that potential. Well, no, not quite.
Now Splatoon's at the top of the charts, what we've been presented with is largely a Quality of Life refresh. Getting everything presented nicely for the active community, but doing little to shake things up. The big takeaway from Octo Expansion's positive response seems to have been that people liked it, so let's do it again. Upon launch, Splatoon 3 became the fastest selling game in Japan ever, but it's one that I can't really recommend to those who bought the previous game, unless they were really, really into it. How many people have to buy Splatoon before Nintendo will let it get as good as their Marios and Zeldas?
Despite this, I love Splatoon 3. It feels a lot like buying into the Mario Kart 9 buzz at the announcement of each new Nintendo Direct for the last few years, and being met with retro track DLC for 8, but this is the best place to play Splatoon. The team have taken their experience from Animal Crossing: New Horizons and ensured that if you want to play Splatoon, there will always be a reason to. Beyond the Turf Wars and Ranked matches, there's now a permanently available Salmon Run, a Turf Wars-based card game, customisable lockers, season-long item catalogues and a whole bunch of cosmetic nonsense to tool about with. The gaps between online matches, which were given diverting little minigames in the first title, and basically nothing in the second, now allow you to practice your techniques and loadouts in a controlled environment. They're taking the idea of playing Splatoon well as seriously as Capcom do for Street Fighter.
This doesn't feel so much like The New Splatoon as our old friend, Splatoon, has moved to a new house. They haven't totally settled in yet, but there's clear advantages to living here, and a few of those things they had to give up in their last place are back. It's not as immediately impressive as Splatoon 2, but there's new potential here. That's part of the frustration of putting Splatoon games on these lists. They never rank as highly as my love for the games would suggest, but they're not all the way there in their first year. At the time of writing this, we've only had two new maps and a Big Run, and I can't judge it on the potential of nebulous upcoming content.
Have the developers become too complacent? That's the risk. I was happy to give Splatoon 2 a pass as a hasty emigration to a more promising platform, but I'm not sure 3 even has as much of a sense of identity as that game. Is this the fate of Splatoon fans? Making excuses for missed potential and abandoned initiatives? Are we the new Pokémon fans?
No - that's an absurd suggestion. I can only be this critical of Splatoon because I love it so dearly. And I believe in the potential. Splatoon 2 didn't launch with Octo Expansion. Splatoon 1 didn't launch with Camp Triggerfish. Hell, look at what this team launched the last couple of Animal Crossing games with, and what they turned into years later. Time and again, the mantra of 'the best is yet to come' has been proven correct. I only hope they want it as much as I do.
Splatoon 3 is finally here. Besides Xenoblade Chronicles 3, I would consider this one of my most anticipated games this year, and it did not disappoint.
While I do love the game, I can't deny the lack of original content is noticeable, and while I personally don't mind re-used weapons, stages, and assets if implemented correctly or at least is inoffensive, many people do. I don't find it lazy or necessarily a bad thing for Splatoon, since I actually enjoy playing on familiar maps and having my favorite weapons and gear from Splatoon 2 being present. However, that still does not excuse the sheer lack of new stuff, 4 new maps, 2 new weapon types, and a lot of quality of life improvements. Unlike my review of Mario Strikers Battle League, I'm much more optimistic and excited for future updates as I feel they'll do a good job at introducing new weapons, variations, and maps to spice things up.
Campaign was actually a huge surprise. This is the first Splatoon campaign besides Octo Expansion I actually 100% and invested a lot of time into. I loved exploring the overworld and the levels were always fun with little to no frustration along the way. Campaign has a lot more unique mechanics and gear as well, such as Splashdown and Little Buddy, while Splashdown isn't "new" it's not in any other mode, and felt it was implemented well. Little Buddy is essentially just a type of splat bomb, and I feel like they didn't really make full use of Little Buddy until near the end, but when he is utilized, it's very well done and fun. Overall, Campaign was a delightful experience I recommend, it's also a great learning tool for new players, but didn't feel like that compared to Splatoon 2's campaign, and not Octo Expansion.
Multiplayer is the same as always. Since there is no longer any Main Power Up, battles actually feel like they take skill to win at, at least more than Splatoon 2 for sure. Specials balancing feels a lot better in this game as well, though I've raised an eyebrow specifically at Trizooka for feeling especially powerful and can single-handedly turn a fight around from my personal experience. Besides that, every weapon actually feels useful in a team comp now as well, since the amount of specials is more condensed, and no more bomb rush, lots of old weapons are shining much more brightly in Splatoon 3's meta, and that's fantastic. I do want to touch on ranked as far as how it works. So for me, I would consider myself a decent player, I average A to A+ usually. The way ranking works in this particular game feels like, no matter how many games you lose, you really will never lose your rank or really that many points. I'm not sure if higher ranks are much tougher to climb or not, but I suffered at least 8 losses in a row, and my rank points barely budged at all. Essentially I just kept grinding away and got to A-, though rank-up battles pile on the pressure and I was happy for that since I actually buckled down and focused a lot more to win those games to rank up. Since your rank to my knowledge does not drop once you achieve it, the stakes don't feel as high, and rather just grinding with the limit being your patience more than anything really. I don't mind this structure, and rank-up battles do pick up the slack, but I can definitely see someone not feeling satisfied or really engaged to play ranked if you can just grind to the highest ranks even if you lose a lot.
Salmon Run has seen a lot of changes as well. The new boss salmon flow very well with the old ones, and each one introduces a new mechanic, or strategy that can really turn the tide of battle, or make things much easier. Flipper-Flopper being a small splatzone is unique and might be my favorite, also has a nice design. Slamming Lid can crush boss salmon underneath it, which makes quick work of more troublesome salmons like Steelhead, which is an awesome detail. Fishstick provides a fantastic spot for snipers with high vantage, and Bigshots make collecting Golden Eggs that are very far away from the basket way less of a chore. The new events are also interesting, though to be honest, I've gotten used to them already and their novelty wore off very fast, but they add more variety and I don't find them too over-tuned or really that difficult. As for the final bonus wave with the King Salmonid, it's very intense and provides a lot of extra rewards for defeating him, so it's a nice bonus if nothing else. You do need coordination, and I'd even say a few leftover specials if you want to take him out, the egg cannon's deal a lot of damage, but I do think you need to plan out your game carefully and save your specials specifically for the King salmon if you plan on defeating him.
Tableturf is the last gamemode, and the one I've played the least. I enjoy collecting the cards more than playing Tableturf, and as an avid card game player back in the day, this was a nice addition. It's not something I want to say many people will invest time into, they'll probably just want to collect all the cards for completions sake while neglecting the actual game, which is what I'm doing. The actual game is fun, and kind of reminds me of a twist on Othello. It's got strategy as well, and probably has more depth than I can recognize, but it's a fun pass time if you're bored of the other modes.
A few more final comments before I wrap this up. The music is absolutely perfection, it sounds like a return to form from Splatoon 1 with it's much more garage/punk rock sound and vibe which elevates the original skater culture Splatoon used to have a bit higher, something I wanted more of in Splatoon 2. Graphics are good, I honestly can't tell if it looks better than Splatoon 2 or not, but Splatoon was never an ugly game to begin with, very vibrant colors, great designs all around, especially the town of Splatsville, there's a lot to explore and tons of small details that make it feel like a real city. Game plays great, no frame drops or lag anywhere. Online for me has been relatively stable, I've dropped games before entering them, never disconnected mid-match yet or have any odd interactions with lag or players in general either. Whether it's an improvement from Splatoon 2's or not has yet to be seen for me, but so far so good. I do think this game is easily justifiable to exist, and doesn't feel like Splatoon 2.5 to me, yes there's a lot of familiarity here, and not much new content, but I truly feel a lot of work did go into this game. I can feel the love poured into it, and so I respect it for what it is and know for sure it'll only improve. One last thing, a lot of people were worried or concerned by the fact Splatoon 3 was starting to adopt a live-service sort of model, or at least bringing in modern shooter design philosophies and cashgrabs like battle passes. Let me be blunt here, I love the catalogue, it's free, it's not hard to rank up, it is a bit of a grind, so you can definitely argue it's potentially adding artificial playtime for people who want something specific out of it (like the dab emote) but I actually like having more incentive to play. People have also tossed around the whole FOMO (Fear of missing out)concept and how it's baked into this game, that I cannot deny, and I definitely understand that not being a great model for any game. However, they aren't charging you more money for any of this, and at your discretion to complete it, with ways to speed up the process a bit. Is it ideal? No. I can overlook it because I do try to focus on positives and have the time to actually grind it out. I'm sure this is a much more pressing concern for others, and I'm not giving Splatoon a full pass on it.
Splatoon 3 is a good game, and lots of fun. I'm looking forward to these next two years of support and content, participating in splatfests, getting to X rank in multiplayer, and playing a lot of Salmon Run (Now 24/7 access, thank goodness). If you're on the fence about getting it or not, I say go for it, there's enough here to entertain you for a long time, and much more to come in the future.
While I do love the game, I can't deny the lack of original content is noticeable, and while I personally don't mind re-used weapons, stages, and assets if implemented correctly or at least is inoffensive, many people do. I don't find it lazy or necessarily a bad thing for Splatoon, since I actually enjoy playing on familiar maps and having my favorite weapons and gear from Splatoon 2 being present. However, that still does not excuse the sheer lack of new stuff, 4 new maps, 2 new weapon types, and a lot of quality of life improvements. Unlike my review of Mario Strikers Battle League, I'm much more optimistic and excited for future updates as I feel they'll do a good job at introducing new weapons, variations, and maps to spice things up.
Campaign was actually a huge surprise. This is the first Splatoon campaign besides Octo Expansion I actually 100% and invested a lot of time into. I loved exploring the overworld and the levels were always fun with little to no frustration along the way. Campaign has a lot more unique mechanics and gear as well, such as Splashdown and Little Buddy, while Splashdown isn't "new" it's not in any other mode, and felt it was implemented well. Little Buddy is essentially just a type of splat bomb, and I feel like they didn't really make full use of Little Buddy until near the end, but when he is utilized, it's very well done and fun. Overall, Campaign was a delightful experience I recommend, it's also a great learning tool for new players, but didn't feel like that compared to Splatoon 2's campaign, and not Octo Expansion.
Multiplayer is the same as always. Since there is no longer any Main Power Up, battles actually feel like they take skill to win at, at least more than Splatoon 2 for sure. Specials balancing feels a lot better in this game as well, though I've raised an eyebrow specifically at Trizooka for feeling especially powerful and can single-handedly turn a fight around from my personal experience. Besides that, every weapon actually feels useful in a team comp now as well, since the amount of specials is more condensed, and no more bomb rush, lots of old weapons are shining much more brightly in Splatoon 3's meta, and that's fantastic. I do want to touch on ranked as far as how it works. So for me, I would consider myself a decent player, I average A to A+ usually. The way ranking works in this particular game feels like, no matter how many games you lose, you really will never lose your rank or really that many points. I'm not sure if higher ranks are much tougher to climb or not, but I suffered at least 8 losses in a row, and my rank points barely budged at all. Essentially I just kept grinding away and got to A-, though rank-up battles pile on the pressure and I was happy for that since I actually buckled down and focused a lot more to win those games to rank up. Since your rank to my knowledge does not drop once you achieve it, the stakes don't feel as high, and rather just grinding with the limit being your patience more than anything really. I don't mind this structure, and rank-up battles do pick up the slack, but I can definitely see someone not feeling satisfied or really engaged to play ranked if you can just grind to the highest ranks even if you lose a lot.
Salmon Run has seen a lot of changes as well. The new boss salmon flow very well with the old ones, and each one introduces a new mechanic, or strategy that can really turn the tide of battle, or make things much easier. Flipper-Flopper being a small splatzone is unique and might be my favorite, also has a nice design. Slamming Lid can crush boss salmon underneath it, which makes quick work of more troublesome salmons like Steelhead, which is an awesome detail. Fishstick provides a fantastic spot for snipers with high vantage, and Bigshots make collecting Golden Eggs that are very far away from the basket way less of a chore. The new events are also interesting, though to be honest, I've gotten used to them already and their novelty wore off very fast, but they add more variety and I don't find them too over-tuned or really that difficult. As for the final bonus wave with the King Salmonid, it's very intense and provides a lot of extra rewards for defeating him, so it's a nice bonus if nothing else. You do need coordination, and I'd even say a few leftover specials if you want to take him out, the egg cannon's deal a lot of damage, but I do think you need to plan out your game carefully and save your specials specifically for the King salmon if you plan on defeating him.
Tableturf is the last gamemode, and the one I've played the least. I enjoy collecting the cards more than playing Tableturf, and as an avid card game player back in the day, this was a nice addition. It's not something I want to say many people will invest time into, they'll probably just want to collect all the cards for completions sake while neglecting the actual game, which is what I'm doing. The actual game is fun, and kind of reminds me of a twist on Othello. It's got strategy as well, and probably has more depth than I can recognize, but it's a fun pass time if you're bored of the other modes.
A few more final comments before I wrap this up. The music is absolutely perfection, it sounds like a return to form from Splatoon 1 with it's much more garage/punk rock sound and vibe which elevates the original skater culture Splatoon used to have a bit higher, something I wanted more of in Splatoon 2. Graphics are good, I honestly can't tell if it looks better than Splatoon 2 or not, but Splatoon was never an ugly game to begin with, very vibrant colors, great designs all around, especially the town of Splatsville, there's a lot to explore and tons of small details that make it feel like a real city. Game plays great, no frame drops or lag anywhere. Online for me has been relatively stable, I've dropped games before entering them, never disconnected mid-match yet or have any odd interactions with lag or players in general either. Whether it's an improvement from Splatoon 2's or not has yet to be seen for me, but so far so good. I do think this game is easily justifiable to exist, and doesn't feel like Splatoon 2.5 to me, yes there's a lot of familiarity here, and not much new content, but I truly feel a lot of work did go into this game. I can feel the love poured into it, and so I respect it for what it is and know for sure it'll only improve. One last thing, a lot of people were worried or concerned by the fact Splatoon 3 was starting to adopt a live-service sort of model, or at least bringing in modern shooter design philosophies and cashgrabs like battle passes. Let me be blunt here, I love the catalogue, it's free, it's not hard to rank up, it is a bit of a grind, so you can definitely argue it's potentially adding artificial playtime for people who want something specific out of it (like the dab emote) but I actually like having more incentive to play. People have also tossed around the whole FOMO (Fear of missing out)concept and how it's baked into this game, that I cannot deny, and I definitely understand that not being a great model for any game. However, they aren't charging you more money for any of this, and at your discretion to complete it, with ways to speed up the process a bit. Is it ideal? No. I can overlook it because I do try to focus on positives and have the time to actually grind it out. I'm sure this is a much more pressing concern for others, and I'm not giving Splatoon a full pass on it.
Splatoon 3 is a good game, and lots of fun. I'm looking forward to these next two years of support and content, participating in splatfests, getting to X rank in multiplayer, and playing a lot of Salmon Run (Now 24/7 access, thank goodness). If you're on the fence about getting it or not, I say go for it, there's enough here to entertain you for a long time, and much more to come in the future.
splatoon 4 takes place in splatroit and the idol is spleminem
So, to say I played a hell of a lot of Splatoon 2 is an understatement. For a while, it was the only game I played (other than Mario maker 2) so to hear about a sequel was exciting. I will admit that I was struggling to figure out what they could do better but oh man.
For starters splatfests are as better than ever, online matches are just great in general and oh man it’s just such a great sequel. Though I wouldn’t really call it a sequel, I feel it’s more like an expansion, especially with the card minigame and the whole new story mode. Like man I couldn’t have asked for a better improvement to one of my favourite online experiences!
Great gameplay, huge improvement, Nessie sweep
For starters splatfests are as better than ever, online matches are just great in general and oh man it’s just such a great sequel. Though I wouldn’t really call it a sequel, I feel it’s more like an expansion, especially with the card minigame and the whole new story mode. Like man I couldn’t have asked for a better improvement to one of my favourite online experiences!
Great gameplay, huge improvement, Nessie sweep
100% completion.The reward was lame. The campaign is basically just Octo Expansion 2.0. The
when you release a sequel to a game on the same console, my general rule is that it needs to justify its existence. well past this games launch the additions feel sparse at best and the longer it goes without substantial additions the more it feels like they should’ve just given splat 2 more dlc.
This is the most refined Splatoon has ever been! But that might be just about it, which is fine. Most of Splatoon 2 is here, a little more optimized, a little more content added, a lot more refined. The Splatlands are the best setting and hubworld yet, having a distinct charm that adds on to the one the series already has. The multiplayer portion is great, although hardly original at this point.
The single player campaign, however, is a little disappointing. The mission based structure worked really well for Octo Expansion, but was simply carried over without much thought, which leads to a disjointed feeling campaign that doesn't really make much sense world-building-wise. The missions themselves are also lacking in original content, only remixing parts that have been there in the story modes prior. There isn't really anything new here, to the point that the Octo Expansion had way more going for it in terms of innovation. The bosses are really lacking too, seemingly an afterthought to an already afterthought-y feeling experience (I'm explicitly excluding the Final Boss Fight here). Overall, I just had an okay time, but I don't even care to return for all the scrolls I missed.
I think the next entry in the franchise will have a lot to prove. The series up until now has been (successfully) polishing the foundation laid in the first game with each new iteration. Now, finally, it should be time for a completely new step.
The single player campaign, however, is a little disappointing. The mission based structure worked really well for Octo Expansion, but was simply carried over without much thought, which leads to a disjointed feeling campaign that doesn't really make much sense world-building-wise. The missions themselves are also lacking in original content, only remixing parts that have been there in the story modes prior. There isn't really anything new here, to the point that the Octo Expansion had way more going for it in terms of innovation. The bosses are really lacking too, seemingly an afterthought to an already afterthought-y feeling experience (I'm explicitly excluding the Final Boss Fight here). Overall, I just had an okay time, but I don't even care to return for all the scrolls I missed.
I think the next entry in the franchise will have a lot to prove. The series up until now has been (successfully) polishing the foundation laid in the first game with each new iteration. Now, finally, it should be time for a completely new step.
Sting Ray is gone. 10/10.
One time I got kicked from a game of Turf War right at the zero-second mark because of server maintenance and then Nintendo gave me a 15 minute penalty because "I disconnected in the middle of a match."