Review: Splatoon 3: possibly flawless
Our Verdict
Splatoon 3 will undoubtedly become one of the best multiplayer games out there. But the issue with playing pre-release is you can only spot the potential. It’s inevitable it will flourish, but I wasn’t able to see it in full bloom. Luckily, the single-player is so good it could be worth buying the game for that alone, while the surrounding quality-of-life improvements and various other additions make this easily the best in the series yet.
Examining Splatoon 3 prior to its release is comparable to going out on a Tuesday night. If it's extremely empty, you almost feel bad about going to the bar, even if it's your favorite. Still, it may be a really pleasant place. You regret taking on such a task by yourself. This makes Splatoon 3's limbs, which are already heavily anesthetized, very difficult to analyze and examine clinically. It may have some heated muscles, but I doubt it will feel the need to tighten them too much.
Nevertheless, I believe that using two metaphors in a single paragraph exceeds the limit my doctor has set ("no, actually, doctor, it's one simile and one metaphor, which is fine right?"). To put it another way, I evaluated the worst possible version of this game. One devoid of the fantastic community that contributes to the game's amazing atmosphere. Even still, I like almost every square inch of its smoldering, offline muscles.
This is just one barrier to comprehension for a Splatoon sequel. The second question relates to Overwatch 2: why? How can a game go ahead meaningfully in a sequel when the first perfectly accomplishes its goal? It's reasonable that Splatoon 2 responded to this query with, "Hey, I'm on Switch." How does Splatoon 3 respond to it, though?
A lazy person than me could come close to referring to Splatoon 3's response to it as Splatoon 2.5. However, any Splatoon enthusiast, like myself, with sharp eyes and a penchant for ink splattering, can discern the adjustments and refinement of the exceptional, the refining and polishing of the excellent, and the energizing of the flawless. The realignment of an ancient keirin wheel is Splatoon 3.
The Splatlands are a vast area far from Inkopolis that is home to the busy metropolis of Splatsville. The Eiffel Tower is upside down and perched on a massive crater in the fringes of the desert. After meeting your squid self, you go out into the desert to become proficient before boarding a train to get to the heart of the congested metropolis. That's all there is to it. You're accepted.
Splatoon operates as follows, in case you haven't had a chance to look at or learn the rules: you have an ink-shooting gun, which you use to run around and shoot; your opponents can shoot ink of a different color; you can swim through your own ink and even climb walls covered in it, but you can't swim through enemy ink. Well, it covers the essentials. After you catch up, the game instructs you to either go into a tunnel where an elderly man keeps appearing and peering out of, or walk to the lobby to start splatting in multiplayer.
You decide to take the elderly man's pipe. Oh no! This is Return of the Mammalians in single-player mode. Although there are tale developments in the Alterna universe where you find yourself, it isn't really the purpose of our visit. To play a video game, we have come here.
Your overworld map is called Alterna, and it consists of six islands with drains all over them that you may leap down to finish a level. The problem is that Alterna is engulfed in a ton of fuzziness. This is a viscous, hairy liquid that is inaccessible to the touch. Throwing power eggs at a big, bulbous ball that emerges from the hairy material is how you get rid of it. Imagine all of the Ganon muck from Breath of the Wild, with the exception that this time it has hair and the bulbous parts aren't eyeballs (in actuality, it functions just like Ganon muck).
Hence, complete tasks, get power eggs, open up further map areas, and so on. There are benefits and drawbacks to the overworld's inclusion. Running about and cleaning up messes is certainly entertaining, but there are also trinkets strewn all over the place. Although the hairy muck bears some similarities to BotW, the remainder of the overworld departs from that theme, so grabbing them is still great if you like items.
Frequently, snow just covers the collectible, rather than drawing attention to it. Nothing in the world would lead you to believe that it is there—many of them are hidden, though not all of them are—so your only options are to get lucky, send your little companion looking for it, or use one of the few available viewpoints to scan the area. If you find it, it will be highlighted in a blue square.
If you play the single-player game through to the finish, this won't matter. But this may be agonizing for any completionist. It was exhausting, but I accomplished everything. (Maybe it's my fault, however; the game doesn't actually ask you to play it that way). This and a few other things I'm not allowed to discuss keep the single-player mode from being flawless.
Fortunately, these are the only shortcomings. The remainder of the overworld is colorful, dotted with a few somewhat counterintuitive hidden secrets, balloon-popping platforming, and navigation challenges. It's a little, stress-free playground with some clever concepts to keep things lively.
Splatoon 3 has almost a hundred single-player levels that are brilliant, opulent, skillful, and exhilarating when they're working at full capacity. They vary from simple hallways with weapon instruction to lengthy, difficult gauntlets and even harsh challenges that take away abilities. Fortunately for those who are new to the game, this is not as challenging as the Octo Expansion, but it is still well designed. (I feel horrible now for bringing up my complaints; the single-player is excellent!).
Every level has a whimsical vibe to it, giving the impression that a team that understands the game inside and out is equally skilled at breaking and twisting it. It also teaches you a lot about how to employ new weapons, new movement mechanics, and overall gaming strategy. It's funny how you can hear design echoes of Mario or Zelda in a game that is so fundamentally different. It's evocative of Nintendo's greatest level-design work on the Switch, and even if it's not the main event, it's darn fantastic fun.
The multiplayer is, of course, the big event. The traditional, simple-to-understand mode that anybody may play is called Turf War. The objective is to use more ink on the ground than your opponents. Easy enough, huh? The level of engagement remains unchanged as you use various strategies to eliminate opponents and subsequently cover the terrain with your ink. To make things even better, the term "WIPEOUT" now displays on the screen after you defeat all four foes in fast succession.
Adarchy bouts, a rebranding of Splatoon 2's ranked bouts, are included with this. There are four games available: Rainmaker (bring the rainmaker to the opponent's plinth), Tower Control (ride the tower to the destination), Splat Zones (keep particular turf squares your color to win), and Clam Blitz (grab clams and toss them in the enemy basket). Do you recognize this? That's because everything is essentially the same.
What would prevent me from dialing Splatoon 2.5 for multiplayer play? There are, in fact, two. First off, this game will radically change throughout the course of its two years of new releases and community gatherings. As previously said with anaesthetized limbs, Tuesday pubs, etc., this seems a little empty in advance of release. When there is a sense of community, the multiplayer experience is much more thrilling. Though it may not be here just yet, it will come.
Second, new mobility skills elevate multiplayer gameplay into even more difficult-to-master area. There are two moves in the game: the squid roll, which allows you to leap in a direction opposite to the one you're swimming in and gain a small amount of invincibility (this will come in handy once everyone is playing), and the squid surge, which allows you to climb an inked wall. The latter seems less useful, but I'm sure that players with greater intelligence than I have will show me wrong.
More than what would first seem, these innovations drastically alter multiplayer gameplay. Yes, the unranked Turf War tadpole village is still a lot of fun, but I promise that once higher-rank Anarchy Battles begin, we'll witness some amazing things. It takes a lot more effort to alter mobility in a game that emphasizes movement so heavily—more so than the majority of competitive multiplayer games.
Improved quality of life is another factor that contributes to Splatoon 3's multiplayer seeming more smoother. Simply said, operations like initiating combat or accessing menus are faster and somewhat more seamless, which is fantastic. To make not playing the main game a little more enjoyable, you also get automatically-saved replays, an inconspicuous Splatcast, and additional customization options, such as your character's attire, player tag, and a new locker you can fill with junk and show off to friends (I spent about an hour customizing mine, for some reason).
Tableturf Battle is another addition. It's a card-based minigame where you use tetromino-esque shapes inspired by different Splatoon-related objects to splat squares on a grid to conquer the battlefield. Playing this, I lost entirely too much time. Although nothing remarkable, it's a lot of fun and a welcome diversion from the intense chaos of the online bouts.
All of this just increases the array of choices, which is a crucial component of the game. There's always something to do if you grow tired of the lonesome single-player mode. You may also go shopping and play cards in the lobby if you simply want to relax.
Salmon Run: Next Wave, a fresh take on Splatoon's horde mode, is another item. Everything moves along lot more quickly now that you can toss the golden eggs you need to gather to meet your quota in addition to the new mobility possibilities. Although it was never my favorite game, Nintendo has made improvements to Salmon Run. It's not my favorite of the four modes, but if that's what you're hoping for, it's better than before.
This feast will more than satisfy your appetite, and it's all presented with a little of sophistication and opulence. Though it's difficult to distinguish visual improvements, Splatoon 3 is unquestionably more attractive than its predecessors. Excellent performance is also a must in a game like this, of course. The good news is that I had no problems using it in docked or portable mode.
In my pre-release experience, the actual human gamers may have been primarily nonexistent, but the in-game phony community is nonetheless noisy and absurd. The music for Splatoon 3 is quite crazy, including a variety of imaginary bands that each fuse distinct genres together. Danceable rhythms, bouncy baselines, and vocoded warbles that sound like Daft Punk set the wackiness dial much too high abound throughout the single-player tunes. Classic songs are returning in the multiplayer and they stomp harder and louder than ever. Additionally, Nintendo has added a strong dose of unsettling, discordant, and mysterious weirdness to Salmon Run's theme, making it more prone than ever to absurdity. I can't even begin to describe how much I like this stuff and how giddy I became listening to all the various tracks. This is very bad.
As an aside, there are a lot more factors that influence the creation and melodies of these songs. There are many of similarities to classic J-pop, hip-hop, punk, and metal songs, but the rhythm and orchestration heavily borrow from Brazilian music, as heard in the Deep Cut song below. Consider the Splatoonized versions of Fabriano Fuzion or Masayoshi Takanaka.
I've thus felt about Splatoon 3's silent limbs and learned a lot. The peripheral features—such as enhanced quality of life, high graphic fidelity, minigame, and all the rest—are superb. It's not the main reason to purchase the game, but it makes everything seem seamless and gives you plenty of things to do.
Even though it's undoubtedly the least significant of the three primary game modes, the single-player experience is just as good as you would anticipate. It makes me feel excited, both about the anticipated DLC and the potential single-player innovations that it may bring. I just want more Return of the Mammalians, please, along with a few less irksome elements in the overworld for us perfectionists.
Regarding the multiplayer features, all I can see is the possibility to create a larger, more vibrant, and devoted community than any of the past games could ever hope to achieve. Yes, Nintendo has made improvements to the gameplay, but it was always excellent. Given that the game is already excellent, what difference does a Splatoon sequel make?
What matters in Splatoon 3 is a reason to return every week for more Turf War, to advance in Anarchy Battles, to send memes and drawings through the letterbox, to share replays of your favorite plays on Twitter, to collaborate with friends to customize your character and amass a Tabelturf deck, and to just keep coming back. And even though I haven't had the opportunity to see it blossom, I'm certain that it's all there. I have no doubt about that.
See our Splatoon 3 weapons, Splatoon 3 idols, and Splatoon 3 hairstyles guides for extra information beyond our Splatoon 3 review.