An Inkredible display of creativity! (Splatoon 3 story in review)

     Have you ever felt like every "shooter" game is very similar? There are so many games that take place in grim and gritty war-torn societies where you have to run through muddy trenches and dark lakes that it's nice when you have some similar gameplay in a completely different environment. Splatoon 3 is the most recent game in Nintendo's weirdest new IP which began back on the Wii U in 2015. There's not a lot to go over here, but there is more than you would think, so I'll talk about it today. I should note, I'm terrible at the Multiplayer competitive matches that make up the bulk of these games, so I'm mainly going to be talking about the Single-Player campaign, which comes with some weird lore and surprising twists and turns!

    Like the first and second games in the Splatoon series, you play as a squid kid, though this time around you can choose between Squid or Octoling (following the Octo expansion from Splatoon 2), and the point of the game is to splat your opponents with ink until they explode. It's certainly a more kid-friendly approach than a game like Doom or Call of Duty, but offers some neat twists on the formula by having the multiplayer matches mainly focused on painting the ground more than the other team. To spray ink, you have tons of different weapons at your disposal, which run the gambit between normal looking guns, tributes to the NES Zapper, a paint roller, a bazooka, paint brushes, an umbrella, and much more. At the end of each match, the scores are counted, and the winning team is the one that has covered the most ground (or Turf, as it's called Turf War, after all). Each match lasts for three minutes, and in that time it gets pretty hectic before coming to a conclusion. In addition to the typical competitive scene, there's an online Co-op mode called Salmon Run, which is Splatoon's take on the "zombies" modes from Call of Duty's games. You and three other players team up to take out the hordish Salmonids, with your ultimate goal being to get golden fish eggs for your boss, Mr. Grizz of Grizzco. It's a pretty fun time, and the fact that you get a different random weapon every time really switches up the feel of the mode. My favorite mode, as I've already stated, is definitely the Single-Player campaign.

A Squid of a Tale!

    This game begins, as the first two did, with the Great Zapfish, the source of electricity for the world, being kidnapped (or squidnapped) once again. Cuttlefish appoints you the new Agent 3 of the New Squidbeak Splatoon to recover it, and obviously it has to be DJ Octavio, the villain from the first two games, who is responsible yet again! That ends up not being the case when a crater opens up in the middle of the Splatlands following your battle with the DJ, and you fall down into Alterna, a cave land with holographic panels resembling the sky that were created by the ancient humans who existed in this world (just go with me). Cuttlefish has been kidnapped (or squidnapped) and now Callie and Marie (The Squid Sisters, a pop group from the first game) and the character that you played as in the original Splatoon (who was originally called Agent 3, but is now referred to as the Captain) want your help finding him. There is also all kinds of gross fuzzy ooze that is making the squidlings grow tons of hair, which is a big confusing threat. This is literally just the beginning of your adventure that I'm talking about now, but it gets more and more wild as you go deeper into this world, finding lore of this sunken area as you complete challenges to reveal and decrypt each little nugget of information became a wonderful incentive to finish all of the levels, I have to say. I won't spoil it all here, but it's a real trip. Deep Cut, the new pop stars created for Splatoon 3, are all delightfully designed (Shiver being designed after a shark, Frye being designed after an Eel, and Big Man of course being a giant manta ray),  and they all have boss fights, which are pretty exciting! A personal favorite of mine was the fight with Big Man, which seems to be a call back to Super Mario Sunshine's first mission from Sirena Beach, "The Manta Storm," and I just love that.

How does it play?

    The content in the campaign mode, to speak no more of story spoilers, is right up there with some of Nintendo's most interesting platformers. They incorporate the gunplay incredibly well into the platforming, allowing you to go up walls to get a higher jump by painting the wall with ink and swimming up, which makes for some pretty awesome verticality in sections. All of the challenges are completely unique, with some making you ride along a grind rail and shooting targets to activate the next track, some being more standard run-and-gun stages, one where you have to duplicate a sculpture on the left by breaking boxes on the right, and even a pretty obvious Pac-Man tribute level. I adored pretty much all of the levels that I played, and the fact that they offer three different weapons to play each challenge with gives a lot more replayability to an already beefy Single-Player mode. The levels are connected by 6 different hub areas, full to the gills with different collectibles for you and your Little Buddy to find. The levels themselves give you Power Eggs, and you need more of those to get Little Buddy to eat the fuzzy Ooze to get you to the next level. I really felt compelled to do all of the missions just so I could get rid of all the Ooze, but I ended up with enough eggs that I can say with certainty that you don't need to complete all of the levels to finish the game. I was very happy to keep playing more though, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that way! The final area is especially cool and appropriately cinematic with pretty high stakes for the world as a whole. I don't want to spoil anything, but I definitely got some Wily Castle from Mega Man vibes, as each level kind of flows into the next one. The mode as a whole was just a lot of fun and I'm glad that I gave it a try, even though as I stated earlier, I'm not very good at the Multiplayer mode.

    The music of this game, as usual, is just top notch. This is definitely the Nintendo IP that is most comfortable with doing something different from the beautiful orchestral score of Legend of Zelda, with the bulk of the music this time around being electronic tracks, sometimes with some vocals from a pop group, namely Squid Sisters and Deep Cut (with maybe some from Off the Hook, the group from Splatoon 2). All of the music is really cool and upbeat, pushing you to the end of each level or each turf war that you embark on. Honestly, I dare you to look up any of the music from this series and somehow not get pumped up by some of these killer tracks. The music in these games are more than just music, the pop stars in each game are actually major characters, and have serious impact on the story as a whole. The Anarchy Splatcast is almost first thing you see in the game, and has Deep Cut front and center announcing all of the maps in rotation during each period of time, just like Squid Sisters and Off the Hook did back in Splatoon 1 and 2 respectively. Speaking of Anarchy, however, there's something that I have to bring up about Splatoon's development.

    Every now and then in Splatoon, ever since the first game in the series, there have been Splatfests. Splatfests are little events that encourage everyone to pick a side in an argument and settle it out on the battlefield. It's a cool idea, but it gets even cooler when it comes to the Final Splatfest of each game. The theme of this special event forced the players of the original title to pick a favorite Squid Sister: Callie or Marie. Marie narrowly won the Splatfest, and so the plot of Splatoon 2 was greatly impacted. Splatoon 2 focused on Marie searching for her missing sister Callie, who you later find out was brainwashed by DJ Octavio's "Hypno-Shades" and was working with the Octarians for the whole game. It's so cool that they let the players decide who would be captured, and I'm very happy that the final Splatfest for Splatoon 2 did the same thing. Order Vs. Chaos was the theme this time around and Chaos won out. As such, the main setting of Splatoon 3 is Splatsville, known as the "City of Chaos," which is why Deep Cut hosts an "Anarchy Splatcast" and also why there is a new mode for the multiplayer known as "Anarchy Battles" which is the replacement for ranked mode. Along with these changes, Anarchy Splatfests have been introduced, no longer having only two options for the question being asked, but three now. We've already seen some exciting ideas with the upcoming fest focusing on which Pokemon type people prefer to start with, Grass, Water, or Fire. It's a great idea, and also a really cool way to integrate some level of cross promotion into their games.

    Splatoon 3 isn't the type of game that I was looking forward to, and to be honest, there's too much emphasis on the Multiplayer components for me to say whether you should pick up the game or not, but I will say that I thoroughly have enjoyed my time with the game, and though I just rented it for a short time, if you're into multiplayer shooters and have some friends with Nintendo Switch, I would definitely recommend it. It's a cool idea and each new version adds a little something more. Many say that the games are too similar to be considered sequels, but I would say that this is closer to a Super Smash Bros. jump, as each version seems to have its own flavors and differences with mechanics, as well as new weapons and a new story mode. I think the Squid Sisters have put this series's innovation best when they give their catch phrase, "Staaaaay fresh!"

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I have to be honest, I wasn't very excited when Splatoon 3 was first announced late last year, but I am glad that I tried it out. I played Splatoon 2 in a similar context, only renting it for a little while and playing through the story and some of the multiplayer aspects, which were well done and a lot of fun, but I forgot just how satisfying it is to ink a wall and swim up. There are so many cool and fun ideas in this game that I'm excited to see what they add in the future, especially if they do another story DLC for this game in the tradition of what Octo Expansion did for Splatoon 2. I hope you're all having a great week, and thanks again for giving this a read. This is Jonathan, your Self-Proclaimed Squid Kid, and stay fresh!