For the third entry of the Splatoon franchise, fans should note these awesome new features many might not know about yet
Splatoon 3 has just released for the Switch, turning Nintendo’s premier squid-based multiplayer franchise into a trilogy. For anyone unfamiliar with the series, it’s essentially paintball with marine life. Players become inklings, humanoid creatures that can turn into squids at will, and take part in team battles where the goal is to fire different colored ink all over the place with more ink in their color than that of their rivals.
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The third entry, on the surface, looks much like its predecessors, an iterative sequel that does little to differentiate itself. Looking a little deeper, however, there are some neat little features that Nintendo have added that might surprise veterans to the Splatoon series.
Splatoon has always let players play fast and loose with gender choices. While there are options for male and female bodied inklings, and the second game added similar options for another octopus-based race called octolings, the player could switch this at any time, and clothing options weren’t tied to character gender.
Splatoon 3 has gone one step further by simply not referring to gender at all. The World Premiere Splatfest event that ran as a pre-release demo avoided using “girl” and “boy” anywhere, and also replaced terms like “king” and “queen” with “ruler” for player titles. The intro customisation screen for the final game even avoids gendered terms by asking players to pick their “style” instead. It’s an interesting choice that allows players to choose their own terms for themselves.
Each game in the Splatoon series has an idol group who represent the Turf War games and take center stage during Splatfest events. While fans love these idols, they’ve always been less keen on how they would interrupt gameplay between matches to announce stage rotations for the game’s various modes in an unskippable news broadcast.
Splatoon 3 shows that Nintendo have listened to fan complaints and made a significant change to how these stage rotations are announced. Players now have a choice between watching new idols Shiver, Frye and Big Man talking about the new stages like before, or simply have text show up in the corner of the screen while they do other things such as shopping. It’s a simple quality of life fix, but it makes a huge difference.
Past Splatoon games have always felt a little slow when it came to getting into games. This was down to lobbies being menus that would gradually fill with players as matchmaking progressed. The first game was able to distract players with a Doodle Jump clone that played out on the Wii U Gamepad, but the second game only had the static menu.
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Splatoon 3 has solved this with a physical lobby space in the world instead. This allows players to play around and test their gear before the battle starts, while holograms of other players appearing between matches in a neat little touch. It makes wait times feel much quicker and is a welcome addition.
The lobby area in Splatoon 3 is more than just a place to test out gear. There are a few new additions to the space, such as a food counter where players can temporarily boost XP and money gains from battles. The coolest new addition, however, is the locker room.
Each player gets access to their own locker, which they can decorate, stock and arrange to their heart’s content. It doesn’t serve a specific gameplay function, it’s just for visual effect. However, it adds an extra layer to Splatoon’s love of self-expression by giving each player a space in the world to make their own, just like they can do with their inkling or octoling.
It’s expected that a new game would bring new weapons, and Splatoon 3 does not disappoint. While these new weapons are mostly new sub-weapons like the Wave Breaker and Angle Shooter, there are a couple of new main weapons too.
One of these is an exciting new weapon called the Splatana, which the name suggests is a paint-throwing sword. It’s certainly wielded this way, with a rapid horizontal slash and a charged vertical slash. However, visually it’s actually a giant windshield wiper, a charming visual touch that adds to Splatoon’s already wacky arsenal of weapons.
In addition to new main and sub weapons, specials have also seen a bunch of new additions. While most of these are variations on what’s been seen before, with devastating huge attacks to reclaim space in a tough situation, there’s one particularly intriguing addition worth looking at.
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This is the Tacticooler, a special weapon that avoids massive damage dealing, and instead turns the user into a support class. The Tacticooler is a drink vending machine with four cans, one for each member of the team, and grabbing a drink from this cooler provides boosts to various abilities for a short time. It’s a refreshing little pick-me-up that adds extra tactical planning to the team dynamics.
Another special weapon worth keeping an eye out for is the Zipcaster, which turns the user into a grappling hook wielding ninja for a short time. A player that activates this will become shrouded in ink, with a tentacle scarf, and can now fire a wire that attaches to any wall.
Grappling onto walls sees the player tugged towards that wall, where they will land with a huge splat, and they will stay clinging to the wall, allowing them to zipline across to somewhere else as long as they still have juice. It’s one of the coolest new additions to Splatoon 3’s weapon selection.
Past Splatoon games have provided the ability to adjust secondary ability slots on clothing items by exchanging sea snails with Murch, the mysterious urchin who lives in the town square. He’s still there in Splatoon 3, but there’s now a new way to expand the viability of gear, and it’s right there in the shops themselves.
If an item of clothing shows up in the rotation that a player already owns, they can buy the item again for a higher cost, but this increases that item’s Star Power and opens a new ability slot. It’s a nice alternative way to upgrade gear without sea snails, which can only be earned during Splatfests.
Salmon Run is a mode introduced in Splatoon 2 that sees a team of four players teaming up to take on hordes of creatures known as salmonids. Players take down these enemies and steal their eggs for a mysterious employer who only communicates through an old statue of a bear. It was a fun mode, but there was one significant problem with it – it could only be played at specific times of the day.
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For people unwilling or unable to schedule their day around a game’s horde mode, they likely would have missed out simply by not playing at the right time. Splatoon 3 has improved this significantly by keeping the mode permanently open, allowing the player to play it whenever they feel like, adding even more variety to the game.
In addition to being able to play Salmon Run at any time, another new mode has opened up for Splatoon 3 players: a collectible card game named Tableturf Battle. Mimicking the game’s main Turf War mode on a tabletop grid, players each pick a card to ink a number of squares that they place without the other player seeing.
It’s a fun little side game that adds even more variety to the game. It also has a charm of its own with a brilliant catchy soundtrack and some excellent artwork on the cards themselves. Also, the first AI opponent is called Baby Jelly, which is adorable.
Splatoon 3 is available now exclusively on Nintendo Switch.
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Leigh is a games writer and content creator. His favourite series of all time is Tomb Raider, although his tastes are wide-ranging, from AAA franchises to indie weirdness. As well as Game Rant, he can be found writing the weekly gaming roundup for Geeky Brummie and making video essays on YouTube at Bobthepetferret. When not playing or writing about games, he can be found at his local cinema, in a DnD group or obsessively making Spotify playlists.