Splatoon 3 review – an inkling of trouble

metro.co.uk:

Nintendo’s acclaimed online shooter returns for a third outing, with new maps and new weapons, but how is it for new ideas?

The problem of how to review yearly sequels is one that’s largely disappeared this generation, with the increased time it takes to make AAA games meaning that, apart from Call Of Duty and sports titles, it’s no longer practical to release a new entry every year – not when seasonal content can keep a franchise in the public eye just as easily. You might be wondering why we’d bring this up, since Splatoon 3 is not a yearly sequel, but it certainly feels like it is.

Splatoon 2 was released in 2017 and at the time there was a lot of talk, in some quarters, of how it was little more than a Wii U port. This was unfair though, and seemingly based more on assumption than personal experience, as while the game was no radical departure it did feature a number of new ideas and helped cement Splatoon as the best new shooter franchise in over a decade.

However, the suggestion that in the five years since, all Nintendo has been able to come up with is what you find in Splatoon 3, implies that maybe the series doesn’t have quite the longevity and elasticity as it once seemed. Either that or Nintendo has suddenly got really bad at making sequels.

For those not familiar with the original two games, Splatoon is a third person online shooter. There is a single-player story mode, which we’ll get into later, but the main appeal comes from the competitive and co-operative multiplayer, which sees you playing as humanoid squid and octopuses who shoot paint (technically ink) guns. While you can shoot and ‘kill’ opponents with the ink the main goal of the primary game mode is to cover more of the map with your colour than the