Splatoon 3

Splatoon 3 (Source: Splatoon website)

Splatoon is one of the newest franchise/IP from Nintendo that manages to be successful. The first Splatoon game — released 2015 on the WiiU — while still a very basic shooter games, validated the concept of the inky-based shooter. Splatoon 2 — released 2017 on the Switch — improves a lot from the first game, added new features, and got the amazing Octo Expansion DLC. The (Splatoon) team got a lot to do for Splatoon 3, especially after the 2020 reveal trailer that hyped up Splatoon players, including me. It may seemed that the Splatoon team did it again, as Splatoon 3 launched back in September 2022 and got a Best Multiplayer Game award in The Game Awards. While it does have a bit of a rocky launch, the game was met with mostly positive feedbacks from people.

And those positive feedbacks are very much justified. I, personally, love what the team are doing for Splatoon 3. Yes, Splatoon 2 is still amazing, but the devs nailed if for Splatoon 3. I had loads of fun playing Splatoon 3, despite having a couple of (minor) issues with the game.

When Chaos won the final Splatfest for Splatoon 2, I’m very interested as for what the devs will do for Splatoon 3 that relates to ‘Chaos’. I thought that there will be another war going on the time period between Splatoon 2 and Splatoon 3, and Inkopolis will be in shambles. As it turns out, no such things like that happens, as we are greeted by the vibrant environment of Splatlands.

Wandering around Splatsville

The Splatsville — Splatlands’ central town/plaza area — is bigger compared to the Splatoon 1 & 2’s plaza. Rather than a simple “circle” layout (Splatoon 1 plaza) or “just an alleyway” layout (Splatoon 2 plaza), the plaza is now styled like a neighbourhood block, with streets/pathways that circle back to the center of the plaza. This allows for other more players to spawn in the plaza area (when connected to the Internet), making the plaza looks more lively. This also allows more user posts to load in, allowing you to read more of what other users are posting.

The Deep Cut crew (left to right: Frye, Big Man, and Shiver) performing during the Pokemon x Splatoon Splatfest (Grass vs. Fire vs. Water).

During Splatfest, we can more strongly see the vibrant-ness of Splatlands/Splatsville. The sun has set, yellow & blue-ish neon lights are everywhere, and those plaza posts are now being shown on temporary “screens” throughout the plaza. The Deep Cut members sings the Anarchy Rainbow for the whole Splatfest, while flocks of Inklings & Octolings watches & cheers for them. This gives Splatfest a festival/celebration feel/vibe that I feel is missing from the previous games. Sure, in Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2 the Squid Sisters and Off the Hook also performs during Splatfest, but it feels more like a back-alley concert rather than a full-blown ‘fest.

The composers for Splatoon 3 seems like they are on a roll as well. Splatoon 3 continues the trend of delivering amazing soundtracks, just like the previous games. Anarchy Rainbow is definitely one of the examples, where we can listen for influences of other cultures in the song, mainly traditional Japanese, Indian, and Brazilian motif. The new Calamari Inkantation is also just brilliant, combining three styles of music into one song. Aside from those two, there’s just a lot of other music from the other side characters in the game that are just superb, ranging from upbeat battle musics, slow-paced lobby themes, and funky beats of Alterna. It’s becoming a running joke that Splatoon 3 is basically a music album that comes with a free shooter game, just because there are such a lot of great music coming from this game. I just wish Squid Beats will make a comeback in Splatoon 3 in a future update, so that we can re-listen to those musics easily & have a rhythm game with those musics as well.

Also, here are some of my favourite musics from Splatoon 3!

Speaking of lobby music, the multiplayer Lobby is one area where Splatoon 3 has improved. Instead of just a waiting screen, we now get a full-blown waiting room in Splatoon 3. There’s a practice area where we can warm-up with our weapon of choice while waiting to be matched for a Turf War/Anarchy Battles. There’s a locker system to showcase collectibles that we have collected/bought from Hotlantis to other players. If you are queuing for battles with a squad, the other players in your squad will pop in to your lobby as holograms.

The new PvP lobby.

There is also a separate Salmon Run Lobby as well! There’s not a lot of difference in terms of what you can do in the PvP Lobby, aside that the contents are more Salmon Run-themed. There’s a model of the Salmon Egg and the basket that are used in Salmon Run in this Lobby, which you can use to practice Egg Throws. The ‘dummies’ are Salmonids, ranging from Smallfrys, the usual Chum, and the big Cohock. These are useful since you can practice & familiarize yourself using the weapons that are currently available in the current rotation. For me, I usually use this to know the time-to-kill of a certain weapon.

The new Salmon Run lobby.

Aside from the Lobby, there are lots of other additions that made into the game.

• New movement tech!

Squid Roll can be used to quickly change your direction of travel. Squid Surge can be used to quickly scale (painted) wall and jump a little bit above the wall. I personally think Squid Roll(s) are great addition for PvP matches to throw off your enemies’ aim. Squid Surge are less useful in PvP matches, but they are helpful in Salmon Run in order to quickly move up walls, particularly to defeat Fish Stick.

Squid Roll

Squid Surge

• Salmon Run additions!

Four new bosses, Fish Stick, Flipper-Flopper, Big Shot, and Slammin’ Lid, are added in Splatoon 3. King Salmonid Cohozuna is introduced to add an additional ‘wave’ at the end of a run. Rewards from (trying to) beat Cohozuna can be used to buy cosmetics, such as new suits that you can use on your next Salmon Run, decorations and stickers for your locker, and banners for your Splashtags. Lastly, the greatest addition regarding Salmon Run is Big Run. Big Run is a timed-event like Splatfest where one of the multiplayer stages is turned into a Salmon Run map.

• Tableturf Mode!

Tableturf is a new game mode is added to Splatoon 3. It’s a Turf War turned into a card game. In 15 turns, players use their cards to ink areas of the map. Just like Turf War, the player that inks the most area wins the game. It’s a neat little game mode to take a break from Turf War/Anarchy Battles/Salmon Run. I just wish that you can collect/buy cards more easily, as the only way to collect more cards are from the Story mode, from completing the Catalog, or from the Shell-Out Machine.

Tableturf Battle.

• Battle/Salmon Run Replays

We can now save replays of PvP matches/Salmon Run! There’s a lot of different configurations for your replay, including looking through the perspective of another player. This is really a great addition, as we can now share our battle replays easily. The community has already utilized this system to analyze & give tips for how to play Splatoon PvP.

• Improved Camera/Snapshot Mode

In previous games, we can only take photos on pre-determined places with our owned amiibo(s). Now, we can basically take a picture everywhere in Splatlands & Alterna. We can adjust the Inkling/Octoling poses, filter, and other effects. And, as before, we can use Splatoon-compatible amiibo to spawn into our photos as well, and we can adjust their poses as well!

Some pictures I took with the new Camera/Snapshot Mode.

Splatoon 3 also comes back with a single-player story mode, titled Return of the Mammalians. The story, in my opinion, does a great job in expanding the lore regarding the history of Inklings and provides a good send-off to the Squid Sisters arc. [SPOILER ALERT] The story also gives us the backstory needed regarding Mr. Grizz’s motives in inventing Salmon Run, which becomes a central plot-point in the story. . The involvement of Deep Cut in the story also adds a nice color to the not-so-serious and kinda-silly story.

The structure of the story mode itself receives quite an overhaul compared to previous games. During the first section of the game, it follows the linear nature like in Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2; enter the kettle, complete the level, repeat, fight the boss, and advance to the next sector, and repeat. After this first section, however, the structure changes and we are greeted with a semi-open world of Alterna. We just need to collect enough Power Eggs to clear a path to the next sector, so we can choose which levels to clear. The levels are in the Octo Expansion style, where each levels had some kind of gimmick to it, requiring Power Eggs to attempt the level, giving you selections of pre-determined loadout kits, and giving you a certain number of lives to finish the level. There is also a skill tree, unlocked by finding Sardines that are scattered throughout Alterna, and by collecting Skill Points by clearing more area in Alterna. At the end, if you are up to the challenge and has completed all of the levels, there is a ‘secret’ level that are long, challenging, and does not have a lot of checkpoints to test your skills. This is definitely an improvement compared to the previous games’ story mode.

Jumping to a bit on the technical side, Splatoon 3 runs pretty smoothly on the Switch. Splatoon 3 is targeting a locked 60 FPS for most of the game, which is crucial for a game like Splatoon in order to maintain a smooth experience battling against other players. The game will drop to 30 FPS on the hub/Splatsville area, which is fine (in my opinion) since you will only do some sight-seeing in this area anyways. During single-player mode, Turf War, and Salmon Run, the game feels very stable. I rarely experience any lag while playing Splatoon 3. My only experience of the game slowing down is only when I did the Big Run event back in November, where there are just a lot of Salmonids spawning in. Outside of that, the game feels very smooth.

Comparison on handheld (up) and docked (down). There's almost no difference.

Splatoon 3 is targeting a 1080p resolution when docked, and 720p on handheld. It seems like a dynamic resolution is used by the game in order to maintain 60 FPS when the action gets a little bit heavy, then use an upscaler to scale the resolution to the target 1080p/720p. I didn’t really notice it when the resolution drops, though there are some spots in the game where I see some shimmer-ing. Interestingly, the eShop page for Splatoon 3 mentions a license for FidelityFX, suggesting that Splatoon 3 uses AMD FidelityFX to do the upscaling. This may explain the shimmer that’s also common in other games using AMD FidelityFX, but I can’t really verify whether Splatoon 3 is using this or not.

Now, while my overall experience in playing Splatoon 3 is great, my experience during online multiplayer was not all smooth-sailing. Splatoon 3 — like other first-party Nintendo games that has online play — uses peer-to-peer connection to host the matches. This effectively makes the matches dependant on each of the player’s connection, and most importantly, the connection between you and the host’s Switch. If you happen to be the host for the match, it’s all smooth. When you are not, however — which is a lot in my case — you will see actions not syncing properly, players teleporting, and suddenly getting splatted by no-one, only for the game to sync back again and you finally see who got the splat on you. I experienced a couple of disconnects as well, and while a small percentage of those disconnects are my internet’s fault, some other are not, and I still receive the same “soft-ban” from Nintendo as if I was the one who are at fault. I wished Nintendo re-evaluate and improve the network system for online multiplayers. Yeah, peer-to-peer are great for lower operating costs, but in my opinion, a centralized host server is better for the overall uniform experience across players, especially for a game like Splatoon.

Ah, yes, my experience playing Splatoon 3 PvP... (No, the video is not buffering, it is like that)

Splatoon 3 is a great example of iterative additions to a franchise. You don’t have to introduce ground-breaking new features to a new game in order to attract players to buy your new installment. You can just polish on an already-great concept of a game and add a little bit of flair on top of it. Splatoon 3 does not have a revolutionary new feature and are more or less the same game as the previous two games, but it is still a great and enjoyable game. I very much recommend Splatoon 3, for old players and even newcomers to the franchise, especially when it already has a DLC planned out. Now, whether it will actually be worth it to buy the DLC or not, well…, that’s a story for another time… Looking at the announcement trailer, though, it seems like the first wave is not really that interesting, but the second wave may be really, really, interesting…

To finish this article, here is my first (and only) 10x Battle victory in a Splatfest.

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Writer’s Notes : Hello! Finally I’m able to finish this! Splatoon 3 is definitely one of my favourite games that launched in 2022, as you may have gathered from this article. What are you usually doing in Splatoon 3? I personally am a Salmon Run player, it’s just so much fun, even though it’s very chaotic at higher level. I was once an Eggsecutive VP, but got demoted and now I am still in Profreshional +3 hell… :(.

What are your thoughts on the second wave of DLC? Will that be Agent 8’s story, Marina’s story, or something else, possible an entirely new Octoling character?

Anyways, my next post will be another one of my favourite game that just came out late January this year. Well, it’s a little overdue now, but unlike Splatoon 3, at least it’s not long overdue…