I'm gonna be real here, this game did not deserve to win Multiplayer game of the year 2022 at the Game Awards LOL.

Splatoon 3 is quite possibly the textbook definition of the term "going through the motions". A game purely content squeaking by doing the bare minimum, and somehow still fumbling even that. For those of you keeping score, we are currently on the third installment in the Splatoon franchise, and a particular installment that released on the lifespan of the exact same console that the second game did, and the multiplayer has not fundamentally changed or evolved in any meaningful way. Some of you might see this statement and retort "well what's the big deal? If it ain't broke, don't fix, right?", except no. There's a lot of aspects that Splatoon's multiplayer contained that ARE broke, and they aren't fixed at all from previous entries. Like, for instance, the map rotation system: only being allowed to play 2 maps every 2 hours. Not only is this mind numbingly repetitive, playing the same map (and for ranked gameplay, the same maps and modes) over and over and over again, but as I'll get into later on in the review, the maps themselves aren't even good to begin with. Even the Overwatch team ended up realizing that map pools are a bad idea and eventually did away with them altogether during Overwatch 2. Splatoon 3 currently has substantially less content in comparison and yet it still decides to...limit content at the same time? I genuinely don't get it. But that's not even the worst of it, no. The worst part of Splatoon 3's multiplayer is that it's so agonizingly SLOOOOOOOW. Not necessarily in terms of getting into and out of a match, these elements are fine. I'm talking purely progression, leveling up, getting new weapons, gear and clothing items. First off even if you've already played Splatoon 2 before (which the game does recognize if you have save data from that game or not and unlocks ranked mode early because of it), the game STILL insists on gatekeeping literally everything from you and pulls the "oh you need to be at least level 4 to get anything" garbage. Leveling up in any capacity, whether it be your player level or your catalogue level takes ages. If I need to play like 30+ matches back to back with a double XP buff activated from a snack ticket and I still haven't gotten from level 7 to 8 yet, that's a bit of a major problem. Progressing in any capacity in this game is a massive grind, an issue they still haven't really addressed since the first game. Even when you DO level up it doesn't really feel like you've accomplished anything, it feels like you've waded through a thick waist high swamp for about 3 hours, you get to the surface to grab a bit of candy as a reward, and afterwards you gotta do the whole wading game all over again. I wouldn't go so far as to label it as an endurance test, but man that's really what it feels like sometimes. 3 being a dated grind fest that barely feels any different than the other entries in any way shape or form would be one thing, but if you ask me it also managed to make multiplayer elements of the previous games even worse if you ask me. The matchmaking for instance is all types of borked. You either queue into matches were you absolutely stomp the enemy team, or you're the ones getting stomped. Those are the two extremes, no in between. It's basically been every single match. Turf war either feels too lethargic and easy or too sweaty and tryhard. On top of this, too many matches get canceled completely because someone disconnected last second immediately after a match started. I kid you not, 3 matches in a row were canceled because someone DC'd, further compounding the sluggish grindy progression system.

The worst offense out of all of what they changed, however, are the new maps. The map design in this game for whatever reason took a massive hit and pretty much 90% of them are the exact same in terms of design philosophy: linear hallways funneling everyone into the center where team fights typically break out. It's bad enough that the maps are all designed like straight shots with barely any room to add creative high ground opportunities or vertical structures (in fact half of the map areas are unable to be inked at all), but it's even worse that we're basically stuck with 2 of these maps at a time for 2 hours. I genuinely cannot think of a single aspect that Splatoon 3 added to improve the multiplayer experience outside of being able to practice your weapon in the lobby room. I legitimately was just not having fun with 3's incredibly lackluster multiplayer experience. Outside of multiplayer, Salmon Run is essentially unchanged, just with a few additional mini bosses. You do get an addition of a ton of new cosmetics to collect and equip, and the catalogue is the equivalent of a battle pass (though thankfully it's free with no option to pay for it). There's also a brand new card game that I must've played for a grand total of 5 times before never touching the thing again. Here's the thing: by the third game, you should have something that innovates and improves upon the previous products. Splatoon 3 doesn't really do anything to innovate and improve on what came before, instead content to cruise by not really doing much of anything. It's quite ironic, in fact, how much this game uses the term "fresh" despite nothing about this game containing anything of the sort. That is except for one thing of course: the campaign.

Yeah, I was as surprised as you were. The campaigns of the previous Splatoon games were a whole lot of nothing. Meandering excuses to give the games single player content and nothing else. It took until the Octo Expansion DLC for the single player to become something interesting. And wouldn't you know it, but the story mode of this game is a lot like Octo Expansion! I do like how it's a complete bait and switch too: it makes you think you're just playing a typical point A to point B level based campaign just like the previous 2 games, until after you face the first boss, the game completely pulls the rug out from under you and fully reveals the cards in its hand. It's a challenge based story mode with a variety of gimmicks and objectives for each stage, the hub worlds that hold these stages are filled with secret items and text logs for added lore, you even get a fully fledged skill tree! A lot of challenges were also crafted for a lot of the special weapons: for instance, that borderline useless Zipcaster special weapon in the multiplayer has challenges built around zipping from building to building in a snappy fashion, it's a lot of fun. The bosses could stand to be a bit better and the game kind of ends up lore dumping everything on you at the end when I felt it could've been more evenly spaced out, but I'm surprised at how much fun I had with Splatoon 3's campaign.

In a way, this is an interesting though unfortunate inverse of Splatoon 2; wheras that game had a mediocre forgettable single player campaign with a beefy and fun multiplayer, this game has a fun and inventive single player campaign with a sluggish dull overly grind-y multiplayer. Sucks that it had to leave the portion of Splatoon that by far has the most amount of content out for the wolves. Perhaps they'll finally start to improve and innovate the multiplayer when the inevitable 4th entry happens, because if they don't then I'll REALLY be in a state of utter dumbfounded shock. Or maybe I won't. Kind of hard to tell at this point.

Do not spend $60 on this game. I would hope they discounted it by now but I don't know.