Category: Third-Person Shooter

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Game Ramblings #228 – Splatoon Raiders

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Third-person Shooter
  • Platform: Switch 2

This is a nearly perfect modern version of what Nintendo championed for so long in their handheld console range – a game that you can pick up for five minutes or five hours and still make meaningful progress. It expands the Salmon Run mode from the core Splatoon games into something much larger while still maintaining the excellent shooting of the series. For me as a fan of single player Splatoon, it’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for.

This is a game that is inherently tied to a power curve loop from action RPGs and it’s probably the main reason why the game works. You’ve got leveling for core stats (health and base attack power) that feels impactful on its own. However, the meat of the game is the weapon system. Even if we ignore the wide variety of weapons, weapons themselves are upgradeable. Even if we ignore the flexibility of secondary gadgets, the gadgets themselves are able to be heavily modified with upgradeable customizations. This is a game where you will constantly be tinkering to get a build that you really stick with.

For my own personal example, I had ended up on a few specific things. As my weapon choice I ended up with Twincans – a variety of the dual shooting weapon that lets you dodge while firing. They have a bit more power than base dualies at the expense of higher ink use, which for me was nice to more quickly dispatch smaller mobs. I then paired this with gadgets featuring even more mobility, like the blast boot that lets me jump into an area while doing explosion damage to clear mobs and freeze effects to stall things that didn’t die, or the jump bomb that let me get airborne away from damage while doing similar impacts on landing as the blast boot. To some extent this build allowed me to simply pull mobs around the environment as I wished, but they also allowed me to change my initiation point to a new area if something more relevant was drawing my attention. However, this was simply my preferred way to play. Because there’s 11 core weapon types – each with at least a subtype – and 15 gadget types and dozens of gadget mods you can kind of build out how you prefer. You can build for speed or avoidance or power and find something that is just as effective and fun.

The important thing is how this is tied to progression and the core game loop. This is every bit a game that is built around loops that are 2-5 minutes. You jump into the world map, pick a location, go in and do some quick singular objective and get out. You get a bunch of currency or materials that you then go back to your base and use to upgrade any number of things. You tweak your gadget loadout a bit or switch to a new weapon, then get right back into it. This is classic Nintendo handheld loops where everything is fast but there’s always meaning. A run doesn’t feel wasted because you are always getting something towards increasing your power and it nearly always feels immediately impactful when you go back into the game. The meta loop also solves at least some of my problem with Splatoon 3’s single player in that the added context gives more meaning to ideas that feel recycled from past games where there’s still value beyond just discovery of the specific mechanic tied to the level.

So then this all ends up working because the game is fun on its own, but that isn’t really a surprise. The Splatoon shooting mechanics have been tried and tested now for years, and that’s still the case here. The core loop of laying down ink, swimming through it, and laying waste to anything that moves has always been fun. The Salmon Run mode in recent Splatoon games has proven that a horde of enemies coming at one person can be fun. This is now just more. This is a game that is taking advantage of the Switch 2 hardware increase not to really do new things but to do more. You have more enemies, more ink flying, more explosive attacks, more range to attacks, more long sight line areas due to level design. Visually I would say they took a huge risk in that nearly everything is a muted color scheme at odds with the series past, but it ends up highlighting how drastically different everything looks once you and the enemies end up covering it with bright ink. It ends up oddly being a really convincing exhibition for the power of the Switch 2 hardware compared to the previous generation.

I’m not entirely surprised I enjoyed this since I largely enjoyed past Splatoon single players. This is definitely taking ideas from those, as well as the ideas present in the Salmon Run mode. The combination of them tied to a much more expansive progression and customization loop just hit a really nice spot that makes this game incredibly easy to recommend.

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Shelved It #23 – Saros

More Info from Housemarque

  • Genre: Third-Person Shooter
  • Platform: PS5

This is a somewhat unusual shelved it in that this is a really well made game and I really have enjoyed my time in it. The…problem as it were? I just don’t enjoy roguelite loops. I can deal with it to a certain extent if the loops are quick but I usually hit a point where the growth of the experience has either stopped because it’s out of new mechanics or because it’s at a wall and I grew bored. I’m more at the first for this one at the 6th boss. However, for me it’s a bit of a miracle that I’ve played a roguelite for 11 hours and counting to begin with, and I can see this one slotting into the type of game that I occasionally return to and eventually just get through via time.

The thing I will absolutely call out here is how good the combat is and I think it comes down to one specific thing – despite being a “shooter” I’m not often doing a lot of aiming. Saros recognizes that it’s first and foremost a game about dodging projectiles, and not so much about creating projectiles. The entire experience is then built around that. You have a rapid dodge that allows you to go through some projectiles. You have a shield that allows you to absorb other projectiles to return as attacks. You have a parry that allows you to block other projectiles. Choosing the correct defensive maneuver is by far the most important part of combat with offense then being a secondary consideration.

This only works because the attacks that are coming at you are very clear and give you enough time to react. Blue can be absorbed, yellow can be dodged through, red should be parried (and additionally, red shields should be hit with a melee attack with the same button). You constantly move to stay at a range where you can still attack but have time to react and never stop being in some form of fast action. It’s fast and relentless but always feels fair. In the classic roguelite pattern it also feels like I’m constantly learning and using that to reinforce the upgrades I’m getting to move further every time.

The lack of aim is completely built into the weapon system. Most weapons have auto-hit with large aim correction built-in, with some specific weapons being instead built and balanced around auto-hit being off. Despite not really aiming though, the weapons still had important variety in letting me build the way that I felt comfortable. There’s things like shotguns and chakram discs that I totally disliked using because their damage felt so inconsistent around how much I was playing a run and gun style. On the other hand there were rifles and pistols that were reliable damage dealers if I needed an upgrade. When I got particularly lucky I was getting one of the crossbow types which were universally a ton of fun for my preferred style, putting out slower shots but much larger damage at a time.

This is then backed by the stat upgrades typical of the genre that have interesting modifications when in the eclipse state. This morphs upgrades from simple stat increases to things with drawbacks. Sure you might get some resilience, but now you take fall damage. You might get increased weapon power, but now you can’t stay still. You may bet better shields and absorption, but now you may have decreased damage at low health. It adds the type of fun decision making typical of the genre in a way built very well around the core gameplay of Saros. I knew I could always comfortably take the penalties standing still or the fall damage penalties because avoiding those things was crucial to my more run and gun play style and tailoring my build to that always felt incredibly effective.

However, the roguelite part of the game caught up to me at around the 10 hour mark near the 6th boss. Each biome introduced new mechanics but over time they were becoming less important because they were starting to become minor modifications to combat instead of large changes. I started seeing fewer new enemy types, and those that were new started to be some clear combinations of existing enemy types. It’s typical of the roguelite meta loop, but for me it doesn’t really work unless the loop is fast, and here it isn’t.

The death loops here are typically 25-30 minutes and that is just far too long for me. It works fine when I feel like I’m making progress, but I just zone out when I get some bad RNG and make no progress in a loop of that length. But that’s the genre expectation and it just doesn’t typically work for me. Getting the 11+ hours I got out of this one is highly unusual. Getting that far was only because the core combat in the game really was simply that good.

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Game Ramblings #162 – Splatoon 3’s Single Player

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Third-person shooter
  • Platform: Switch

Splatoon 3 sits in a weird spot. It’s far more involved than the base single player of Splatoon 2 thanks to it taking advantage of the sort of Portal chamber setup from the Octo expansion. However, it’s not nearly as inventive as that was. Because of that it’s simultaneously a lot of fun but also predictable, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.

It’s easy to get drawn into a game when it’s this stylish, and that’s always been a mark for the series. They get a ton of mileage out of bright colors, the cool painting mechanic, and a great soundtrack. However, that’s all stuff that we knew we were going to get. The Octo expansion for Splatoon 2 showed a certain level of play that the series really benefited from in a single player setting. Having a level where you play Breakout is unexpected. Having a level where you are pushing a ball around a maze is cool. It felt like it was taking the playful aspects of the shrines from Breath of the Wild and putting them into a shooter.

Splatoon 3 has the same meta game aspect as that, but it feels like it leaned too hard into the shooter aspects. The levels are almost entirely one of two things – physics platform puzzles around your ink jumps or straight up combat segments. The handful of times that it leans into something a bit more playful, it often feels like it’s just replaying ideas from Octo. It’s not that the mechanics are bad, because honestly the levels are a ton of fun in isolation. However, it’s disappointing. We already knew the mechanics would be solid, and we already knew how they work because this is the third game. It didn’t need to lean into reteaching that core.

The boss fights end up being the real highlight of the single player as a result. Some of them are purely combat focused, but really play well into mixing ink movement and accurate firing. The one above is a standout, not because it’s original, but because it is a 100% riff on the same manta ray ink fight from Super Mario Sunshine. Ya, it leans way harder and leans way more unforgiving, but it was fun to see something so obvious being done to great effect. The final boss just ends up being a complete spectacle. It’s got multiple phases, some ridiculous robot fighting, and all the story spectacle of something that belongs as a game ender.

It was also nice to see some more lore. The previous games have fed some aspects of this being a post-human post-apocalypse world, but seeing the full scope of how the world got into its current state and how the inklings came to exist was a nice little bonus.

In the end though, I was just wanting more. I’m not necessarily looking for something open world or more traditional third-person shooter, because I’m not convinced that it would bring anything beneficial to the gameplay. Splatoon as a multiplayer experience is such a specifically crafted core gameplay that I don’t think translates to a larger experience. What I wanted was just more creativity in making interesting puzzle chambers. The thing that they benefited from with Octo was being able to just do silly things because they were crafting 2-3 minute long isolated experiences. This just felt like it leaned too safe, despite the quality of what is there.