{"id":1631,"date":"2022-09-14T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2022-09-12T17:39:03","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T21:39:03","slug":"game-ramblings-162-splatoon-3s-single-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1631","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #162 &#8211; Splatoon 3&#8217;s Single Player"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/splatoon.nintendo.com\/\">More Info from Nintendo<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: Third-person shooter<\/li><li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: Switch<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Splatoon 3<\/em> sits in a weird spot.  It&#8217;s far more involved than the base single player of <em>Splatoon 2<\/em> thanks to it taking advantage of the sort of Portal chamber setup from the <em>Octo<\/em> expansion.  However, it&#8217;s not nearly as inventive as that was.  Because of that it&#8217;s simultaneously a lot of fun but also predictable, so I&#8217;m not entirely sure what to make of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_Splashdown.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s easy to get drawn into a game when it&#8217;s this stylish, and that&#8217;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&#8217;s all stuff that we knew we were going to get.  The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=849\"><em>Octo<\/em> expansion<\/a> for <em>Splatoon 2<\/em> showed a certain level of play that the series really benefited from in a single player setting.  Having a level where you play <em>Breakout<\/em> 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 <em>Breath of the Wild<\/em> and putting them into a shooter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Splatoon 3<\/em> 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 &#8211; 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&#8217;s just replaying ideas from <em>Octo<\/em>.  It&#8217;s not that the mechanics are bad, because honestly the levels are a ton of fun in isolation.  However, it&#8217;s disappointing.  We already knew the mechanics would be solid, and we already knew how they work <em>because<\/em> this is the third game.  It didn&#8217;t need to lean into reteaching that core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_Mario.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_Mario-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1633\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_Mario-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_Mario-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_Mario-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_Mario.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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&#8217;s original, but because it is a 100% riff on the same manta ray ink fight from <em>Super Mario Sunshine<\/em>.  Ya, it leans way harder and leans way more unforgiving, but it was fun to see something so <em>obvious<\/em> being done to great effect.  The final boss just ends up being a complete spectacle.  It&#8217;s got multiple phases, some ridiculous robot fighting, and all the story spectacle of something that belongs as a game ender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/S3_HammerThrow.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the end though, I was just wanting more.  I&#8217;m not necessarily looking for something open world or more traditional third-person shooter, because I&#8217;m not convinced that it would bring anything beneficial to the gameplay.  <em>Splatoon<\/em> as a multiplayer experience is such a specifically crafted core gameplay that I don&#8217;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 <em>Octo<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Nintendo Genre: Third-person shooter Platform: Switch Splatoon 3 sits in a weird spot. It&#8217;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&#8217;s not nearly as inventive as that was. Because of &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1631\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #162 &#8211; Splatoon 3&#8217;s Single Player&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1635,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,38],"tags":[86,280,84,88],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-switch","category-third-person-shooter","tag-nintendo","tag-splatoon-3","tag-switch","tag-third-person-shooter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1637,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}