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My kids absolutely love it Splatoon 3. They play all the time on their switches, and my eldest told me he thinks the Salmon Run portion of Splatoon 3, which features co-op survival against waves of incoming mutant salmon enemies, is the best enemy shooter there is.
Splatoon Raiders, a Switch 2 exclusive available this week, is not a replacement for Splatoon 3 or a true sequel. It wasn’t even designed to be that. But if you liked those parts of Splatoon 3’s Salmon Run, this is like a lot of that in one big standalone package. It’s nice to look at, runs smoothly and quickly, and I was hooked after a week of playing. But Splatoon 4 isn’t, and that says a lot about how Nintendo is approaching the game Switch 2 in his first year.
The Splatoon Raiders leave the big city in the final games and explore a series of islands where a small crew (Deep Cut, the band from the other Splatoon games) gets lost on a rickety house ship, stranded on the Spirhalite Islands. Journeys are made to these islands, infested with these mutant salmonids, along with a small mechanical robot companion. In battles, this robot helps you shoot a little, and it’s also a base you can jump on to jump into the air. Gameplay-wise, it’s similar to other games: shooting, gyroscope-based aiming, and diving into the paint to reload.
I like how Splatoon 3 has multiple game modes, offering plenty of ways to play both online and offline. There are classic PvP arena battles that include a paint mode to cover areas, but there’s also a single-player story mode, a co-op survival mode, a Salmon Run mode, a tower-based challenge game in a downloadable add-on and even a mini-puzzle game.
Splatoon Raiders is a single-player adventure, a series of island-hopping level challenges that alternate between treasure-hunting map battles, time-based survival battles against increasingly powerful enemies, and “dungeons” with puzzle-like obstacles that you must overcome with limited weapons.
The entire game can be played alone, or you can invite three others to join the co-op mode to play any role with you: a planned expedition with friends, or summon strangers to join you and help you if you need an extra boost.
I found myself stuck on some levels, losing and replaying over and over again. The good news is that extra weapons, extra boosts, and level-up experience are collected even when you lose, so making sure you get more power is totally part of the design.
There are plenty of ways to customize and enhance weapons in Raiders, and a lot of that happens through spending collected crystals and other extras to build a home base of a larger, floating ship with more workbenches that can manipulate your equipment. A range of different ink-shooting weapons, like Splatoon 3’s weapons, can now get power upgrades. You can add three different ink tanks that also have different benefits (Speed, Strength, and Tactic) and add different types of “tools” to those tanks that have extra attacks and can be assigned to the Switch 2’s shoulder buttons. You can also add slots for additional badge powers that can grant special advantages in battles or for survival.
It’s fun to tinker with, and customizing your gear is obviously a big part of this game. I kind of miss the simplicity of Splatoon’s original core battles in the paint area. But that’s what Splatoon 3 is for, and Nintendo seems to acknowledge that you’ll likely come back to that game even if you own Raiders. Splatoon Raiders feels like a special big DLC add-on, packaged as its own game.
Is this kind of a dilemma for the Switch 2 now? While $450(Soon to $500) Switch 2 is excellent, but still not necessary. And many millions more people own Switches than Switch 2s. Maybe that’s why no true Mario or Zelda sequels have been released on Switch 2 yet. Many of last year’s Switch 2 exclusives feel more like quirky spinoffs than true sequels, including Mario Kart World.
Do I think Splatoon Raiders is good? Yes, very much. But it will never be Splatoon 3. For $50, it’s worth it. But it makes me wonder when Splatoon 4 will really arrive, and when Nintendo will truly commit to a major franchise on Switch 2.
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