SerpApi.Org
Nintendo turns the Splatoon franchise into a primarily single-player game, based on the popular Salmon Run mode, but is it as much fun on your own as it is with friends?
One day we hope not to start a Nintendo review with a commentary on their strange decision-making and perplexing priorities for the Switch 2. That day is not today, because the overriding thought with Splatoon Raiders is… why?
Although it’s had a more modest impact in the West, Splatoon is hugely successful in Japan, where 2022’s Splatoon 3 became the biggest video game launch ever and where massive music concerts attract thousands of fans. The popularity is well deserved as, in the West, the games are sorely underappreciated, as highly original third person online shooters that are quite unlike anything else around (especially now clone Foamstars has been shut down).
The problem with the Splatoon sequels is that they changed almost nothing about the original game, with Splatoon 3 in particular having so little in the way of new content or ideas it’d make Call Of Duty blush. You’d therefore think Splatoon 4 would be an easy game to get ready for the Switch 2 launch, and an obvious priority, but no. Instead, we’ve got Splatoon Raiders, a mostly single-player only game that also doesn’t do anything new.
It’s tempting to assume that Splatoon Raiders was originally just DLC for Splatoon 3 that, in the usual Nintendo fashion, exceeded its original goals. But Splatoon 3 already has single-player DLC and like the single-player modes for all the Splatoon games it’s… okay. Splatoon was primarily designed as an online game and while simulating aspects of that gameplay in single-player can be relatively entertaining, it usually lacks the speed and intensity of the multiplayer modes.
Splatoon Raiders’ big idea is that it’s trying to emulate the co-op Salmon Run mode, first introduced in Splatoon 2, rather than the gameplay of the main competitive modes. Salmon Run is excellent, but it does ignore the paintball aspect of the other modes, so that your guns are used as more traditional third person weapons – although they still have the benefit of shooting ink, which you can travel in more quickly and use to refill your ammo.
The first missed opportunity for the game is that there’s almost no story. You’re an unnamed mechanic helping idol group Deep Cut to search for treasure, in order to get Splatsville out of a debt crisis. It’s unclear why they thought there’d be any treasure in the hidden archipelago they crash onto, but it turns out it’s actually home to the Salmonids – the cannon fodder enemies from the Salmon Run mode. Not only is there virtually no plot but Deep Cut come across as entitled divas most of the time, which all seems a major missed opportunity.
Since there’s no narrative to add structure, you end up just picking raids according to your current character level and how well that matches against the stated Salmonid threat. If you try and take a quick path through the game – by only completing the raids essential to opening up progress – you’re quickly going to come up against ones that are almost impossible to beat. So in that sense there is level-grinding, but if you just play each raid in turn there’s almost no need to repeat anything, until the post-game.
Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
