Man, guys,Splatoonis over a decade old? It’s kind of nuts that in that time we’ve gotten three main entries, plus now a new single-player-centric variation on the theme inSplatoon Raiders. Nintendo has been rightfully praised for its interpretation of the competitive shooter, a genre that if you had asked me ahead ofSplatoon’s announcement, I would have said Nintendo cannot and will not ever play in. But it has, and been riotously successful with it. While the main threeSplatoongames had single-player campaigns,Splatoon Raidersis Nintendo’s first proper attempt to take a stab at what a meaty, mission-based shooter looks like.
If you’ve ever played aSplatoon, you’re probably not that worried about how well it’s going to translate. You certainly shouldn’t be.
Splatoon Raiderssends a trio of treasure hunters (who moonlight as a band) and their pilot-turned-mechanic out to a set of deserted islands said to be full of sick loot. These islands are also full of Salmonids, a group of sapient life forms that exist in the same world asSplatoon’s Octolings and Inklings but who, for some reason, are not treated as reasoning beings and are instead largely shot on sight with ink guns that kill them. Look, this is a goofy and lighthearted Nintendo game, and the dev team clearly just regards the Salmonids as thoughtless monsters. But it isa little weirdto give them a clearly expansive culture with art and music and society, publish a dev interview about how internally everyone felt bad about murdering them, and then commit to it anyway. I was sort of hoping for at least an attempt at a better explanation for recreational colonialism thanSplatoon Raidersgave me.
It may just generally be folly to expect more from aSplatoonstory, even a single-player one. The actual plot, when you’re not inking Salmonids to death, is fine. Cute, even. Shiver, Frye, and Big Man are fun, if shallow, companions on the islands, and as unimpressed as I was with the overall depth of what was going on here, their big, joyful personalities are a key part of what makesSplatoon Raiders’ finale so triumphant and effective.
There’s also loads here, buried in hidden collectible scrolls, forSplatoonlore nerds to feast on. I didn’t understand how it all connects, but I’m sure whoever theSplatoonlore YouTubers are, they’ll catch me up later. But while I’m willing to praise whatSplatoon Raidersadded to our greater understanding of the Splatoon world, I wish there was more aesthetic variety in the maps you visit. I don’t really feel like I’m hanging out in a lived-in world so much as a series of sandy beaches, a glacier, a volcano, a cave, and a temple. That’s it, and those same styles are repeated ad nauseum across some 50 stages.
Speaking of aesthetics, I wishSplatoon Raidershad more and better fashion options, and better music. I think the developers offered a great explanation for why the soundtrack is basically a bunch of people banging pots and pans together, but I still didn’t enjoy most of it (the final boss theme rips). These two issues I found particularly surprising given how critical both fashion and music have been to theSplatoonuniverse over the years.
But all this is incidental to the experience of actually playingSplatoon Raiders, which is a blast.Splatoon’s single-player modes have always been great, andSplatoon Raiderslets that greatness loose. The campaigns of yore have traditionally been very obstacle-course heavy, and those are present here, too, in all their glory (and terror; some of them are very difficult), but they exist alongside a variety of other missions including objective-based adventures, those where you fight through waves of enemies on a time limit, and big open spaces where you run around and shoot guys until you fill up a meter. There are small boss battles and big ones, too, and stages that throw increasingly obnoxious combinations of familiar enemies at you that make you go “Oh no” to yourself when you see what’s in front of you. If I see one of those pot lid snipers aiming at me, I am dropping everything to go ruin its day before it ruins mine. It’s very effective enemy design!
Which, speaking of, I love every weird little dude in this game.Splatoon Raidersis full of incredible little details, like the bits and bobs of human trash all the characters use for armor and weapons. Why is my ink gun a dish soap bottle? It’s amazing.
As I played, I thought a lot about how “cover” is a pretty typical thing to find in shooters. You’re often meant to hide behind things and shoot out from them.Splatoon’s multiplayer trilogy discourages this, but still has lots of vertical obstacles you can hide behind, climb up, and use to your advantage.Splatoon Raidersthrows out the idea entirely. Most of its levels are flat, or at worst sloped, and waves of enemies pile on top of you like a gaggle of exuberant children at 6am on Christmas. Theoretically, you can make your own cover by spraying ink, but enemies can still see and hit you while you swim. A few of them (like those annoying snipers sitting on towers of pot lids) can shootthrough wallsfor some reason and hit you even if you do hide.Splatoon Raiderswants you in the middle of the action as much as possible.
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You’re tellin me a squid fried this rice?!
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Using all the cool ink weapons, moving around the stages, all the funny enemies, build customization, chaotic moments
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Not enough fashion variety, music was weird, stages were too similar aesthetically
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Roughly 20 hours to finish the campaign plus most of the side missions, still loads more in the post-game though
I am sure, if you are smart and good at shooters, you can work around this for a defensive build.Splatoon Raidershas chargers and other long-range weapons, after all, and its fantastic fun tactical-themed ink tank (as opposed to the power or speed tanks, which encourage different builds) definitely seems geared toward those who want to stay out of the fray. This is a game all about build customization. Personally,Splatoon Raiders’ lack of places to hide and wait encouraged me to always be in the action, even as I favored the tactical tank. And as the game went on, various upgrades I acquired only pushed me further in this direction. By the end, I had stuff equipped that would set things I touched while swimming on fire, and a defensive gadget that made multiple swirling rings of damage encircle me for several seconds, wiping out anything that got too close.
It’s justso fun to swim and jump and shoot! You move so fast! The ink you shoot blobs onto the walls and floor and enemies so beautifully! It makes lovely gloppy splashy sounds! And oh, man, when you get really powerful and know you need heavy firepower and drop all three of your gadgets at once and then open fire and watch stuff melt? The rush isgreat!You can do sweet tricks, too, apparently, due to the high level of customization across the different weapons, gadgets, and parts you can equip. People are going to be showing off new stuff in this game for months. Man, I never really knew what it meant when people said a shooterfelt goodbefore I played the firstSplatoon. Nintendo has only gotten better at the craft since then.
I have a few more very, very minor nitpicks aboutSplatoon Raiders.If I went into great detail on every single one, or even a few of them, this review would sound far, far more negative than I actually feel about my experience. So here’s a quick, rapidfire accounting: I wish stages had retry buttons. It’s weird that my companions never learn my name. I think rollers feel a little weak, but maybe I just need to play better. I wish you could stealth by swimming slowly in ink, though I understand design-wise why that doesn’t work. It’d be nice if more stages had the ability to backtrack if you miss a collectible. I wish the relationship dialogues between the main character and the trio had any substance to them at all.
But as I write this, I am actively forgetting all of those things. Really, what I take away fromSplatoon Raidersis that it is very fun. It is fun alone. It is fun with friends, with a surprisingly excellent co-op mode that lets you finish almost the entire story together, if you want. It is fun if you are going through colonoscopy prep. There’s a ton of post-game content I haven’t even touched yet that looks fun. There’s really very little inSplatoon Raidersthat ever gets in the way of it being just an energizing mood lifter to play. TheSplatoonseries remains one of the best-feeling and most welcoming shooters I’ve ever picked up, and I think it deserves a hand (a tentacle) for remaining consistent on that front through an entire 15-20 hour campaign.
As I playedSplatoon Raiders, it crossed my mind that if Nintendo keeps (fry) cookin’ like this,Splatoon 4is gonna rule. But it was very easy to stop thinking about that future and focus on the present, where I have so much more splatting inSplatoon Raidersto do.
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