Splatoon 3 Review in Progress: Multiplayer

Matches are as fast as they are frantic, but are approachable enough that anyone can easily get into them and have a blast. Even if you miss inking another player to eliminate them, you’ll still be inadvertently painting the ground to help your team towards victory. Splatoon 3 has also made a smart tweak by moving your starting position and respawn point from an easily abused spot on the ground to launchpads up in the air, letting you pick which part of your base to launch into (and see where your teammates are going to launch), or check the map to easily target a teammate on the field to give them backup. This does wonders for letting teams escape getting camped in their own starting area, so long as they coordinate their efforts.

Each map is nearly symmetrical and features elements like mesh walkways to slip through, ink rails to zip along, paths to ambush from above, and multiple routes with different advantages to allow for calculated strikes or bypassing into enemy territory. The Turf Wars mode in particular never loses its chaotic fun, as there are plenty of chances for last second comebacks and extremely close matches. Many of the best maps from previous Splatoon iterations have returned — that includes Mahi-Mahi Resort and its changing water level that reveals more turf to ink, as well as the MakoMart that has you splatting foes along the aisles of a giant supermarket. Of its new additions, I really came to like the tall towers in Scorch Gorge that made for excellent sniping spots (or points to ambush using the new Zipcaster special), and the Hagglefish Market’s various routes that let me tear through boxes of debris. The Turf Wars mode in particular never loses its chaotic fun, as there are plenty of chances for last-second comebacks and extremely close matches.

As you level up from playing matches, you’ll be able to browse Splatoon 3’s huge assortment of weapons, which ranges from traditional blasters and speed-increasing ink rollers to literal paint buckets and precise snipers. All of Splatoon 2’s best options can be found among those offered at the store, including two new weapon types. The allure of the Splatana (a giant squeegee on a wiper blade) caught my sword-loving eyes, though I have yet to master its extremely precise swipes that emit projectiles that remind me of The Legend of Zelda’s Master Sword. The other new armament is a bow called the Tri Stringer, which can be charged up to unleash three ink bolts that explode after a short pause. It’s a fun concept that has great potential in pinning down foes or keeping them away from objectives, and I’m excited to really give it a run for its money in Splatoon 3’s ranked modes.

Earlier Splatoon games required players to accumulate currency from matches to buy different weapons, but Splatoon 3 has done a great job anticipating the needs of returning players in order to make weapon acquisition easier. Here you get a token each time you level up that can be exchanged for one weapon, and while there’s a slow but steady roll-out of beginner friendly weapons at first, you can also choose to spend three tokens to pick out any weapon regardless of its level requirement. This benefits both veterans who want to go right to their favorite, and also newer players who might not want to wait 10 levels to get another bucket-type armament if they’ve come to love the one they’ve been using early on.

In fact, many of the new tweaks and changes in Splatoon 3 seem to have its experienced players (especially competitive ones) in mind. You’ll find not just one or two, but four different firing ranges to try out weapons depending on where you are and which mode you’re practicing for. The inclusion of a Recon Mode is also an extremely welcome one, letting you freely explore any of its 12 launch maps in order to get an understanding of the level’s terrain and choke points on my own. After playing multiplayer matches, you can now view replays of your last 50 battles, which included a wealth of great options like being able to swap to another player’s view on either team with a quick button press, or quickly scrub through the timeline and set up highlights to share online.

The best addition by far is the new lobby, as you will no longer be trapped in a nebulous menu while you wait for matchmaking to begin. There’s now a wonderful open space to wander where you can see holograms of your friends to check what they’re up to (or if they have a spot you can join), and make use of the giant practice range’s many neat features — and even clean up all the ink with the press of a button. In between matches, you can quickly swap out stat-boosting clothing and weapons (something that wasn’t available when Splatoon 2 first debuted), and also see other players running around the practice range before the next match starts. Not only are these new additions sorely needed, they’re presented in a cool and stylish way that perfectly echoes the fresh fashion and design of Splatville, and a locker room below even lets you customize your very own cubby with stickers and gear as another place to express your personality. You’ll also earn new titles, badges, and banners that add even more customizable style to your inkling character.

Splatoon 3 still holds a strict and sometimes nonsensical insistence on gating certain features that were present in previous incarnations. I understand why new players really should try playing Turf War before anything else — including the PvE Salmon Run mode that unlocks at level four, and the ranked objective modes in Anarchy Battles that unlock at level ten — but you’re also banned from shops and even your own locker room until level four for reasons I’m still trying to justify. Even the new tabletop card game seems needlessly gated, despite it being only against AI for the time being. At least for those returning players with Splatoon 2 save data, you’ll be able to hop right into ranked battles and buy a few choice weapons early on.

The aforementioned PvE Salmon Run has returned, and thankfully it’s now available to queue up for 24/7 instead of the bizarre decision the previous game made to close it down for hours at a time. You’ll still be given random weapons from a set as you and three other players battle hordes of encroaching Salmonids, and the new Splatana and Tri Stringer can really shine here. I particularly love the new intro that showcases you and your buddies preparing to launch out of a helicopter like you’ve been dropped into Metal Gear Solid 5. The act of surviving waves of enemies while collecting golden eggs from the various boss monsters that show up is still a lot of fun, and there are some great new tweaks here too.

Most notable among those changes is the ability to launch a golden egg you’re carrying ahead of you like a grenade. This opens up a huge realm of possibilities for maximizing your time in a map as you can bank shots like a pro basketball player, or work with your team to rapidly collect eggs and launch them between each other to reach the goal faster. Of course, the tradeoff is that launching eggs requires a ton of stored ink just like a grenade, and may leave you vulnerable and out of ammo as a result — which is another great risk vs. reward choice to introduce to a mode already full of them.

New boss enemies also bring fresh strategies to the mix, like the Fish Stick that drops a giant spire into the ground to harass you from above. Being able to take them out and then use their pillar as an attack point is a great touch. To reward players for repeated wins, a new Godzilla-like salmon boss can now appear too if you’ve been on a roll, and the atmosphere instantly changes when it does. Instead of stockpiling eggs, you’re encouraged to use them as ammo to launch into the beast to take it down — but you’ll still be rewarded for making it as far as you have even if your team is defeated.

Of course, all of these modes are only great when fighting with or against other players, which is something I haven’t been able to do enough of quite yet. Due to what seems to be a very limited amount of people playing pre-release, so far I’ve only been able to try out certain modes for a few hours each. Add the strict level gating to the mix (which shouldn’t be as big of a problem when the servers are open for all) and I’ve barely been able to participate in ranked battle modes much at all yet, let alone against a good variety of opponents. I’ll be updating this review with my final thoughts and a score once I’ve spent some time swimming through its live servers, but what I’ve managed to play has already been a lot of fun, with enough tweaks and new additions to feel like a new and vastly improved version of a game I already loved.