How One Stupid Shirt Got Me Hooked On Splatoon 3

thegamer.com:

Splatoon is a strange beast. It’s a third-person shooter, except the more I play, the less it is. It’s a painting game, it’s an action-oriented iteration of Chicory. You get more points – and crucially, more wins – for your paint coverage than you do for getting kills. Or at least that’s how it seems. Nothing is ever really explained in Splatoon. The game assumes you’ve played the previous two entries, which I haven’t, and therefore understand the game modes, which I don’t.

This makes for an incredibly abstruse experience, as I completed Turf Battle after Turf Battle in order to unlock some guns and buy some gear. When I finally hit level 10, the point at which ranked mode adds more variety to the playlist, I was thoroughly burned out of splatting squids and spraying paint. I was practically playing Splatoon like Animal Crossing, logging in every day to check the stores, hit my daily cheap gacha, kit out my character, and decorate my locker.

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I left Splatoon well alone for a few days, focusing instead on leveling up my Temtem and getting annoyed about a card game that I’ll never play. But when I returned, I remembered that I’d ordered a cool shirt that I’d spotted a fellow Inkling wearing. So I approached Splatoon’s resident wheeler-dealer, Murch, who I can only assume steals the clothes right off Inklings’ backs when you order them, readied my wallet, and – 50,000 coins? You can’t be serious.

I thought I was well-prepared with my 20k of currency, but I was nowhere near. The shirt was cool, an edgy white affair with slapdash patches, accompanied by a bandana around the neck. It’s a bit Mad Max, a bit cowboy, a bit Cyberpunk streetwear. I’m no