Nintendo does a lot of weird things, but Splatoon might just be one of the strangest — or at least the boldest. The series started as an attempt to muscle into the ultra-competitive online shooter space, but in a way that feels a world away from the violence and bombast of Call of Duty or Battlefield. Splatoon is essentially candy-coated paintball starring a race of skate punk squid creatures, and across three entries Nintendo has just about perfected the formula. The series introduced the idea of competitive shooters to whole new audiences, and now it’s expanding: Splatoon Raiders takes it in a different direction, but with the same focus on making shooters more approachable.
As opposed to past entries, which primarily revolved around team-based competitive matches, Raiders is what’s known as a looter shooter. Think games like Destiny or Borderlands where you take on missions and explore dungeons in order to earn new gear and skills, which in turn let you take on more challenging missions and dungeons. It’s a genre where repetition is inherent in the premise as you replay levels over and over again in search of the best loot. This means that the moment-to-moment experience — how fun the weapons are to use, how interesting the levels are to explore, how much incentive there is to get new gear to play around with — has to be enjoyable enough to encourage those replays. And that’s exactly where Splatoon excels.
In terms of how it plays, Raiders is nearly identical to its predecessors. You still control a squid-like kid that can wield various weapons, ranging from guns that look like Super Soakers to gigantic paint rollers. Splatoon’s defining characteristic is ink: It’s what you shoot at enemies, but you can also transform from a humanoid into a squid in order to swim through it. Immersing yourself in ink lets you move more quickly through a level, replenish your health, and refill your ammo supply. The result is shooter action where you’re constantly moving, because standing still means death (or, in the parlance of Splatoon, getting splatted).
That all remains true in Raiders. But here you’re using those skills while traveling to various levels in order to defeat enemies and find treasure. The story has you playing the role of a mechanic aboard a craft that crash-lands on a mysterious chain of islands. Unable to leave, you and your fellow crew — which consists of members of the in-universe Splatoon pop group Deep Cut — set about building a rickety base and then exploring the islands in search of treasure and, hopefully, a way home.
Like most looter shooters, the gameplay cycle works like this: You gear up at base, head into a level, return home with some improved loot, and then do it all over again. There are a few types of levels in Raiders, which get progressively more challenging, and they mostly involve either defeating a huge horde of enemies before a clock winds down or collecting a large amount of fish eggs that drop from downed foes. Some levels are brief, lasting just a few minutes, while others require more exploration. There are also boss fights against some gigantic creatures that remind me a bit of the elaborate battles in Monster Hunter games.
Essentially, Raiders takes Splatoon’s core gameplay and transposes it into a new genre. And it remains a blast, with levels that have an incredible sense of tension; there were many times when it came down to the last few thrilling seconds, which determined whether or not I’d beat a level. And while you can play through the whole thing by yourself, Raiders also supports co-op play for up to four people.
What really makes Raiders work, though, is that it also constantly encourages you to experiment. One way it does that is through the sheer amount of customization options. There is a huge range of different weapons to use — my favorite is a katana made of sponge that can splash ink — and each one can be leveled up and tweaked by adding parts that can alter its abilities, making it faster or stronger. You also have multiple powers that unlock over time, each of which provides a different benefit, like a spinning top that explodes on impact or a turret that provides cover in a heated shootout. Finding what works for you means trying out a lot of ideas. But the game also goes a step further. In order to fully level up your abilities, you actually have to try out different items and use them for a prolonged period, and some stages even have different treasure depending on what you have equipped. This keeps you from finding one kind of playstyle and sticking with it through the whole game.
The remarkable thing about the original Splatoon was how it took one of gaming’s most intimidating genres — competitive online multiplayer — and turned it into something incredibly approachable. Raiders does the same thing for looter shooters. It’s not a never-ending grind where you feel forced to play levels repeatedly in order to see any progress, nor is it a live-service experience intent on sucking up all of your free time and money. It takes the basic elements that have made the genre so popular — exciting gunplay, challenging levels, fine-tuned customization — and puts them in a package that respects the player and their time. At a moment when the live-service space is imploding, and new shooters fail with alarming regularity, Raiders is a reminder of why these games are so popular in the first place — as well as a sign that Splatoon still has plenty of room to grow.
Splatoon Raiders launches on the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 23rd.
