When the final Splatfest was announced in Splatoon 2, they asked players, “What sort of a world would you wish for the Inklings and their friends: Chaos or Order?” And in the end, Team Chaos was victorious, which means that the world has fallen into Splatocalypse. Welcome to Splatoon 3!
I’ve never played a Splatoon game, but now I have a Switch so I’m curious. What exactly is Splatoon?
Is this true? They selected the theming and setting for the sequel based on player feedback? That’s amazing.
The main mode is a 4v4 multiplayer shooter, where the goal is to cover as much of the arena as possible with your team’s color of paint. The characters are all humanoid squids, and you can swim through ink of your color. So you can choose to play it like a shooter, where to confront your opponents head-on, or you can avoid the fight and just paint as much ground as you can.
There’s also a single-player mode and a team vs. environment mode, but that’s the gist of it.
It’s also pretty heavily themed: There’s a hub world where you can wander around, pick out gear, meet other characters, and surrounding art and graffiti is all based on artwork that players put into the game.… It’s pretty cool. Just to give you an idea of the look:
So one of my favourite MP shooters is Titanfall 2. For a long time I had it and Splatoon 2 jostling for first place and I think these days I err more on the side of Splatoon 2, for a bunch of reasons. (Titanfall 2’s SP campaign is still the best. Not played Splatoon 2’s SP yet but Splatoon 1’s is no slouch.)
Anyway! What makes the Splatoon games so special and unique is the interplay between the squid kids and the ink. I don’t think its design smarts are highlighted or celebrated enough in the MP shooter category to be quite honest. The ink serves several purposes:
There’s also super jumping too which allows you to effectively titanfall squidfall on to your teammates or squid beacons by bringing up the map and tapping their position. This can be risky but at the right time can maintain offensive pushes or defending lines.
These things add up to create this wildly exciting space where movement, territorial control, sneaky and team play converge. On top of all this you’ve got a bunch of ranked modes (essentially control point, king of the hill and capture the flag with a newer mode that I didn’t get to play much), a co-op horde mode and lots of varied weapons and sets that all have their place. There’s a lot of personality to the weaponry here, which is something I prefer over Titanfall 2 as well.
Splatoon 1 and 2 are also unique in that they don’t allow you to select maps and modes. Aside from your standard Turf Wars, they’re all on 2 hour rotations. Some folk hate this but there’s several massive upsides: firstly, everyone plays every map and mode and gets better at them. Secondly, everything gets playtime and exposure and a fair showing. Thirdly, it keeps things fresh. Fourthly, and most importantly, there’s no ghost town modes. I love Titanfall 2 but man, I wish more people played some of the other modes instead of just Attrition, Attrition, Attrition. I don’t know what Splatoon 3 will do in this regard but I hope the developers stick to their splattershots and keep the rotation system going.
The soundtracks are awesome. There are loads of varied levels, all great. Perhaps the single most important thing for me–like, I don’t think I’d be able to play the Splatoons without it–is the gyro/motion aiming. It was first introduced on the Wii U version and it was such a revelation to me that I’ve been disgusted by console shooters not embracing it as the de facto way to aim in the absence of mouse and keyboard, especially given how most new controllers have a gyro. From an accessibility point of view too. It’s a travesty. Gyro aiming is the light.
Also, the Splatfests were fun community events!
Sweet thank you!
Also, the characters are called “inklings”, which is an excellent pun.
Gameplay-wise, the nice thing about the main Turf Wars mode is that the winner of the match is solely determined by which team covers the most area of the arena with their color. That’s it. So even if you aren’t great at shooters, or if you get killed a lot by the enemy, you can still win the match just by focusing on area coverage. In fact, it’s great when the opponents get too focused on kill and forget about the actual goal of the match. I try to stay hidden deep behind enemy lines, so my teammates can warp there after they get killed.
From an aesthetic viewpoint, I really like the user-designed artwork, which is a holdover from the Wii U version when users would draw on their gamepad. In the hub area, you see users’ artwork in thought bubbles above their head. And during Splatfests, that same artwork is used on flags or banners or fireworks in the sky or graffiti on the walls, and it’s also used on the walls and signs and displays during matches. It’s a cool way to flesh out the world with user-designed artwork:
Yeah, totally agree!
Sorry, couldn’t resist. I’m not sure how much its vetted now but some of them have made me laugh a lot, and plenty are pixel art in their own right. It’s a great idea and another thing that makes the game so vibrant. Man, I think it’s time to play the Splatoon 2 SP campaign and maybe pick-up the Octo expansion.
I’m surprised you didn’t play the Splatoon 2 campaign if you liked what was in the first game. S2’s is waaaaay better than that.
Let’s just say it was difficult to tear myself away from the multiplayer!
That’s great to hear though Dave.
Yeah, it took me awhile to give it a try too, but it’s totally worth it! There are some great levels and inventive bosses in there. :)
I preferred the DLC levels to the campaign, but a lot of that is me being tired of the “super easy base level with hidden collectables everywhere” paradigm. The bosses were definitely good in both.
There’s a pre-release demo and splat fest that’s going to be running for the next 12 hours, so get on it if you’re curious.
My kids have been counting down the days, and woke up saying it feels like we’re going to Disneyland.
Same here, haha. I love Splatoon and so far the demo has been fantastic. I’ve missed it!
Do other games have special weekend competitions like Splatfest?? I’m really unfamiliar with other shooter games. But yeah, my kids always looked forward to Splatfest weekends. I love the whole party atmosphere! The theming makes this game for me.
I just hope they don’t abandon the Splatfests like last time. Just recycle them if you have to, Nintendo.
Yeah, it seems like it should be an automated system.
I’m not aware of any no! I particularly like the themes of each Splatfest too. I’m team paper this time!
