Review: Splatoon 3

destructoid.com:

I remember when I first previewed the original Splatoon at Nintendo headquarters many years ago, and it felt like it was the beginning of something special. How special? Well, a lot of people probably didn’t predict that it would still be around seven years later, with Splatoon 3 keeping the spirit alive.

Thus far with a limited sample size, this has been a series of incremental changes, to be sure. But if Splatoon 4 rolls around, there’s less that needs to be done compared to what we got with Splatoon 2.

Splatoon 3 (Nintendo Switch)Developer: Nintendo EPDPublisher: NintendoReleased: September 9, 2022MSRP: $59.99

Splatoon 3 is a coat of many colors, offering up a full campaign, multiplayer (casual and ranked), a new card game called Tableturf Battle, and Salmon Run (the PvE horde mode). This is on top of all the game’s social features, like wandering around the new hub city and checking out other players’ loadouts and Miiverse-esque drawings and sayings.

After creating your character (and customizing the hairdo of your little companion named Small Fry), you’re tasked with completing a very short tutorial on inking and locomotion, then it’s time to head to the city. From there you have the option of going straight into multiplayer (Salmon Run and Tableturf Battle unlock at player level four, which is the equivalent of a handful of core multiplayer matches), or the optional campaign. Despite their inherent simplicity, I’ve always been a fan of the Splatoon campaigns — and this time there’s a little more complexity involved, thanks to the way the map works.

While you’ll start off with a few introductory levels in an area called The Crater, you’ll quickly graduate to the main hub called Alterna, which is separated by six