Like many, Splatoon 3 felt to me like a game that was certainly a lot of fun, but at the same time rather familiar. Its campaign was solid, but familiar. Its multiplayer proved to be an easy way to watch a single 3-minute round morph into ten 3-minute rounds, though again, the rounds themselves were very familiar. That isn’t to say that Splatoon 3 was bad – far from it, in fact – but instead was the first time in the series that I’d be left yearning for a new direction. Something different.
Enter Splatoon Raiders, a game that essentially feels like Nintendo’s take on an extraction shooter… only with more squids and ink, of course. With a deeper emphasis on single-player, though, does this new direction work for the series, or should you wait for the inevitable Splatoon 4?
Splatoon Raiders opens with Splatoon 3’s Deep Cut trio riding a helicopter piloted by your character (known as the mechanic), only to crash land on the Spirhalite Islands. What initially starts out as mere survival, then turns into a treasure hunt, the group discovering the numerous nearby isles hide within them various Salmonid treasure. Setting up base on your floating hideout ship, you’ll set out isle by isle, taking on missions, gathering resources and of course collecting treasure.
Fans of Splatoon will feel instantly at home with Raiders, with the general third-person gameplay largely the same. You’re still a squid. You’re still firing off ink from a whole assortment of quirky weaponry. You’re still able to swim around in the ink you’ve laid out. What has always helped set the series apart from so many other shooters out there is its ink mechanic, a clever way of making a family-friendly take on the genre, whilst also using it as a means to impact your movement, swimming at speed along the floor or even up walls. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the ink you’re shooting comes in a rainbow of different colours, once drab-looking environments soon looking as though an artist’s paint supply box threw up everywhere. Suffice to say, all the same charm and satisfying shooting gameplay are present and accounted for here.
Just like past Splatoon games, you’ll have a wealth of wacky-looking weapons and gadgets at your disposal, taking in one main weapon and two secondary gadgets on every raid. On the weapon front, these feature the familiar lineup of Super Soaker-looking Splattershots, sniper-like chargers, pistol-sized Dualies and more. The gadgets, meanwhile, offer brief assistance in the form of turrets, boomerangs, ground-shaking punches and even a hefty hatchet, each of these operating on a cooldown. Which of the gadgets you wind up using will depend on the ink tank you choose to carry, these bracketed into speed, power and tactical. As you can imagine, experimentation between the countless combinations proves highly satisfying, especially when you unearth a truly devastating match, making the Salmonids easy prey.
You won’t be sent out to raid on your own, though, since one of Frye, Shiver, or Big Man will tag along, riding in a small Exploration Bot. Not only can this contraption help in finding treasure, but it can also give you a quick boost into the air and even helps in fending off enemies too.
The gameplay loop of Splatoon Raiders essentially boils down to gearing up, venturing out, gathering resources and levelling up your character to become more powerful. It’s a process that any extraction shooting fan should recognise instantly. Though your hideout ship offers merely the basic of needs initially, you’ll slowly build and unlock numerous stations in which to craft and upgrade your gear, be that powering up your main weapons, gadgets or ink tanks. To do this, you’ll need to gather resources out on your raids. These come in the form of Spirhalite Shards (pretty much the game’s main currency) and random materials from certain enemy types. Alongside these, you’ll also come across new and more powerful weapons as well as gadget parts, the latter offering unique perks to your various gadgets.
With weapons, Splatoon Raiders introduces a levelling system, where the higher the level, the better the weapon. Alongside this, you also have a star system, basic weaponry at one star, and anything above introduces bonus abilities like quicker recovery or better ink consumption. Gadget parts, meanwhile, operate on a slot system, each part taking up a certain number of slots on your gadget, often dependent on its impact and power. What’s great about the parts is that they aren’t all merely stat boosters with some impacting the behaviour of the gadget. Take the turret-like Pot Shot, for example, some gadgets improving distance and power, but others granting you the ability to set off two at a time or explode when thrown.
Along your journey, you’ll also uncover artifacts, these equipped to your tanks and awarding bonus perks. In fact, Splatoon Raiders offers so much customisation and upgrading, you constantly feel rewarded for every effort you make. Playing this, I see why people get so drawn to the genre.
Every time you venture out to tackle a raid, you’ll be faced with one of a few varying objective types. The first is a simple point-to-point stage, a sort of hike through a linear environment, with batches of Salmonids popping up along the way. Another takes you to a more open environment where you’ll need to farm Power Eggs in order to power your Exploration Bot to drill into a large Spirhalite Shard ore. Easily the toughest, though, are the game’s time-limited stages, a race to take out enough Salmonids and collect Power Eggs. Succeed, and you’ll drill down and move onto the next layer underground. Fail, and it’s back to the hideout ship. Locating hidden compasses in stages will also unlock dungeons, these offering bite-sized obstacle courses, often focused on a single gadget or gimmick. These prove to be a lot of fun and often force you to use your limited arsenal in some interesting and creative ways.
What I particularly like about Splatoon Raiders is that it works as a standalone 12-or-so hour experience as well as an ongoing game you want to come back to, whether that be to further upgrade your weapons, unlock more gadget parts or tackle some of the many higher-levelled stages. Even jumping online with others produces a totally different experience unto itself, giving you the option to team up with three others and take on raids together. What surprised me, however, was the game’s help system, allowing you to either send out a call in hopes someone will assist you on your next raid or be the one doing the helping. It’s such a great inclusion, especially if you don’t have others to team up with, and it does yield some rewards in lending a hand. Even when I felt I’d experienced everything Splatoon Raiders had to offer, the game had more to give even after rolling credits. There’s no doubt, I’ll be playing this for months to come.
This being a Splatoon game, you can expect a highly stylish-looking and sounding experience and Raiders manage to continue that trend. Of particular note are the various isles of Spirhalite Islands, a strangely intriguing mix of natural and dilapidated locations combined with the odd hint of kitchen and food imagery throughout. While not as strikingly eye-catching as the past Splatoon settings, it’s definitely a very uniquely different one, which I feel works to the game’s exploration-focused narrative.
Splatoon Raiders is a brilliantly moreish extraction shooter, whose ink-based gameplay helps make a well-trodden genre feel fresh and interesting. A great time alone, assisting others or grouping up with three friends, Splatoon Raiders proves there’s far more to be done with this series, and I, for one, cannot wait for where we go next.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Nintendo
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