Splatoon 3 review: Nintendo’s well of squid ink has run dry

Enlarge / Familiar Splatoon faces show up to usher players through a confusing, unsatisfying campaign. (credit: Nintendo)

In the crustacean-filled universe of Nintendo shooter series Splatoon, (sorry for the pun): Something fishy is going on.

I'm not sure what Nintendo was thinking with its push of Splatoon 3, this week's brand-new sequel, as a replacement for 2017's Splatoon 2. Where the last game added meaningful new weapons and modes to the series' quirky online modes, this year's new model adds a sprinkling of online-only content, which at best leaves the formula unperturbed and at worst is in dire need of rebalancing. And while Splatoon 2 and its 2018 expansion pack delivered some of the best solo campaign content of the Switch's generation, Splatoon 3's equivalent is a slapdash mess.

Thanks to limited pre-release online testing, I can't definitively review that half of the game, and I'm wondering how much of it can be redeemed with post-launch support. But I'm comfortable enough to say that Nintendo has dropped the ball for series fans and created an unwelcoming mess for newcomers.

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from Gaming & Culture – Ars Technica https://ift.tt/ILOSA9r