Why Splatoon 3 should cement the quirky shooter as Nintendo’s best modern franchise

Why do I live in the UK? A pile of land glued together by rickety agreement, full of people trying to avoid attractive Europeans, led by a lawbreaker who still refuses to use a comb.Worst of all (at least in summer), it’s a hype wasteland Splatoon 3.

By extension, Western Civilization feels like a forgotten party for Splatoon fans. Sure, Splatoon 2 has sold 10 million copies worldwide, and there’s plenty to match online, but it’s clear that Nintendo has uncharacteristically released two sequels in seven years to satisfy its insatiable Japanese audience.

According to Famitsu, Splatoon 2 is the fifth best-selling Switch game in Japan, after Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. No wonder they’re prioritising the Killer Holographic Splatoon concert.

The reception to Splatoon 3’s release date announcement shows a huge gulf. Nintendo’s Japan YouTube channel has nearly doubled its views (2.3 million) compared to the US (1.2 million), but has only one quarter of subscribers.You’ll find the same results in the irrefutable science of Twitter engagement with the number of “likes” Announcement from Japan Equivalent to the entire population of Sunderland.for North American Tweetsyou’ll find more of life in the Isle of Man.

Well, for Western audiences, when Splatoon is seen as having the same prestige as the new Zelda, Mario, or Pokémon, it’s probably jarring — even if it’s fully deserved. The downside of the original Splatoon was that it launched in 2015 on Nintendo’s best-selling console, the Wii U, so the hasty release of the sequel on Switch two years later feels like a reboot of their best franchise since Pikmin. While Splatoon 2 has many improvements, including a very good single-player mode, it’s a familiar experience. For a company that has yet to release a new F-Zero due to a lack of fresh ideas, the sequel seems unusually conservative.

Splatoon 3’s five-year interval feels like a healthier pregnancy that propels the series forward. Ironically, we haven’t seen much to prove it. Obviously, there are new weapons like crab tanks and angle shooters to lay tripwires. Co-op horde mode Salmon Run is back, a stressful industrial nightmare where you battle waves of mutant fish for your eggs. It’s the best showcase of Splatoon’s bizarre quirks and creepy character designs. Even better, in Splatoon 3, you can now throw eggs. Long live the revolution.

These additions, while impactful, are undoubtedly minor tweaks. However, Splatoon 2’s inventiveness in its single-player game makes the third entry an exciting proposition. Like Nintendo’s best work, it squeezes all its juice out of weapons and mechanics, and rarely repeats its tricks — from levels designed around sniping with chargers, to rolling barrels with rollers and “ink rolls” Smash at the enemy, and when shot, launch a makeshift platform like those 90s slap band bracelets. From the structure of the hubs, the fluidity of the levels, to the launch pads you soar through, it’s designed with a strong Super Mario Galaxy vibe.

If the levels were borrowed from Mario, the wonderfully weird bosses would have been pulled from Valluigi’s cheese dream. There are sentient octopus grills, bulging samurai riding unicycles, and smoking shower heads lifted by Octocopters. They can also be tricky, requiring a degree of spatial awareness to line up splash paths on the ground to dodge attacks, climb fast, or avoid being overwhelmed by bosses’ perennial slime.

All of this is amplified in Splatoon 2’s Octo expansion pack, Nintendo’s greatest DLC ever. The challenges are more creative and varied, and instead of serving as an introductory ramp to the basic mechanics of multiplayer, extend your skills to the Inkling hardcore. If your contribution to turf wars is the equivalent of painting a corner, the Octo extension is a training sergeant to smear your face on your inadequacies. You’re forced to master every weapon and perform graceful juggling under strict constraints – from inkjet jetpack shootouts, fighting in tight parking spaces, and dodging down laser corridors like squid Tom Cruise.

The existence of Splatoon 3 shows that Nintendo has enough ideas to go beyond what has come before — a hypothesis that, while optimistic, is very exciting to think about. That’s what platform holders are blocking (probably a non-E3 showcase), and it’s tempting. From an early trailer, the new hub, Splatsville, looks much more expansive and detailed. The new desert location Splatlands, while disappointing for the brutal pun department (Splathara? Slavanna?), might be the best graphical showcase for the Switch since Luigi’s Mansion 3. Shots of the Eiffel Tower half-buried in the sand have implications for other iconic European landmarks; like having a Splatfest to the death inside the Colosseum, or fighting killer salmon on top of Big Ben.

A daydream? Maybe. I would accept post-apocalyptic France as a potential game for the Western eye. The freshness of new things aside, Splatoon is still a shooter like no other after seven years. Sure, it’s seen as Nintendo’s family-friendly product, but it’s the opposite of everything most modern shooters represent in the best possible way – color! Punk pop! No battle pass! – A party pit with unrivaled personality and mechanical depth.

Even though Splatoon 3 is another traditional sequel, Splatoon has little tradition. Breath of the Wild 2 and Pokémon Crimson and Violet may get attention in most corners of the world, but Splatoon is the only Nintendo series that dares to divide civilization into the only important boundary — ketchup or mayonnaise?

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Splatoon 3 finally has an official release date: the latest squid-based game is coming to Nintendo Switch on September 9, 2022.