Topic: Splatoon 3

@WoomyNNYes The first time I saw them, we squidbagged in unison. It was unironically quite touching.

@Fizza Nice, nice. Ahhhh, no one has squidbagged in my game!! Some of the holograms twirled around spinning in place, that was it.

The tricolor splatfest starts in an hour here.

@WoomyNNYes I assume you live in Australia (or are using the Oceania region time) then since it's already over here in Ireland/Europe?

@Fizza No, Eastern US. So, my time zone is possibly 5 hours behind you. For me, my splatfest is 12pm-6pm, tricolor 6-pm to 12am.

It's about 5pm here now.

@WoomyNNYes Ah, gotcha. Looks like I need to brush up on my geography XD

This is so much fun. I've played all three games, but for some reason I'm liking this the most.

Had a play of this demo earlier here in the UK, it was pretty cool, but I can't tell much of a difference between this and Splatoon 2 - is it just me that feels this way?

Does anyone else think the world and characters and art and basic abilities in Splatoon would make an excellent platformer or rpg? I'm not the most into battle games, but I think I would fall in love with a spinoff.

The demo is fun also though.

Right, now that the Splatfest is over (at least here in Ireland), there's one thing in particular I want to gush over more than anything else at the moment: the Aerospray.

The Aerospray MG/PG is my co-main weapon of choice in Splatoon 2, right up there with the Custom Dualie Squelchers and both regular Blasters. I absolutely love how much turf it covers, giving it easy and frequent access to it's specials. However, there's a reason I mentioned both of those Aerosprays: the MG, my usual preferred of the two, is so godawful at fighting that I have to constantly switch between it and the PG. Where the MG does well, it absolutely excels (like Splat Zones or Turf War for instance) but the lack of any meaningful offensive pressure (aside from the love taps brought about by the weapon itself) makes it painful to love at times.

So what if I were to tell you that 3's rendition fixes every single problem I had with the original?

You want to go hog wild with painting? The maps are even BIGGER than before. You want immediate, long-lasting pressure? Fizzy Bomb's got your back. And do you want an invincible, OHKO-ing on both startup and end special with a massive blast radius with a variable activation time? BLOODY REEFSLIDER. They made the Aerospray more offensive than the BLASTER. AND I LOVE IT.

In short: get ready to see me clutching my precious aerosol can close to my chest when 3 comes out.

I like it, but there's a nasty glitch Nintendo will hopefully catch. I got stuck in the lobby for over 10 minutes twice during the demo.

@Fizza Noticed this too, as I loved the aerospray in Splatoon 1 (I skipped 2). Definitely a lot more offensive options, though god, my aim is just beyond awful, haha. Got more frustrated with the game then I had fun with how I was fiddling with the motion controls and turning… shooters are just doomed to be not my thing or something, but at least it was kinda fun.

@FishyS Absolutely. I actually like the single player stuff in splatoon more than the multiplayer so if they went for a full-fledged adventure instead of a multiplayer shooter I’d be on board. One of the only reasons I might still get Splatoon 2 someday.

@FishyS The single player campaign in Splatoon is a platformer. I really liked the single player in Splatoon 2. I replayed Splatoon 2 single player and Octo Expansion single player several times. This Splatoon 3 demo was just to test the online multiplayer. Go check out Nintendolife's youtube review for Splatoon 2, if you want.

I see people say that in article comments every day. So, you're not alone.

I'm fine getting new content. There's new weapons, sub weapons, special weapons, new maps, songs, new single player, new stuff added to salmon run. If you're looking for a leap like from Mario 3D World to Mario Odyssey, this isn't that. It looks like they reused the game engine. The dev period was like two years.

I had no idea what was going on in the Tri-Color Turf War. Was the goal to ink the most ground or to control the Ultra thing? And what the heck even was the Ultra thing? It's at least cool that they did something new, but they did a horrible job explaining it.

I have never played a Splatoon game before (never owned a Wii U and just got a Switch a month ago), so obviously I wasn't very good in the roughly 45 minutes I played this today. I figured I might as well give it a shot given the hype and the fact that it was free and small to download, but I doubt it will be something I buy. It also doesn't help that I don't really play games online anymore as I prefer to just play single player stuff. I do have to give the series credit for doing something different with the online shooting genre though.

I had a good time with the Splatfest overall. I love some of the new specials, and out of the two new main weapons, I think I like the Splatana the best. I'll probably get the full game at some point, either as a gift or if I catch it on sale.

@Xyphon22 Apparently, getting the Ultra Signal activates the Sprinkler of Doom, which shoots ink around for the rest of the match (the color of the ink depends on which team nabbed it). I didn't even know the purpose of getting the Ultra Signal until I looked it up. Yeah - they could've explained it better.

I really enjoyed this demo. It was hard at first as I wasn’t to sure what weapon I wanted to play. But once I got the rolling it was amazing, the new abilities are a blast, the graphics are better then ever, the battle were just pure chaos.

Cant wait for this!

@Xyphon22 Pretty much, you have to color the most ground by the end, and collecting the thing pushes team scissors to team rock or paper, depending on which side picked it up.

It was pure chaos, but I loved it a lot!

Splatfest was fun enjoyed the new specials and subs they were very creative and didn't feel like they ruined the experience while playing, though I definitely know which ones are getting nerfed on release lol. Game ran and played very smooth as well.

Maps felt pretty hit or miss though, some were unnecessarily big and didn't add to the experience and had a big emphasis of elevation despite there being very limited option to reach said higher places.
Like there would just be a ramp to crawl on the rooftops for example that you would have to swim all the way back to access, why didn't they add ink rails for some of the maps like Splatoon 2 did?
Add some ink rails here and there and the maps will be a lot more enjoyable, perhaps maybe not make them unnecessarily big, alot of them were hit or miss to me and didn't feel right for turf war especially.

And the new weapons - while their designs are very cool and I love their aesthetic, my god the weapons are awful in practice lmao:
The Tri Slinger is a diet charger is almost every sense of the phrase, it's charge time is much longer to get to one shot kill and it's tri shooting mode is very bad at turfing and killing (4 hit kill), and also inaccurate I can't see any reason why you would use it aside from turfing despite it being mediocre at it. It also doesn't help that you can store charge with this weapon, adding on to the all risk no reward design of it.

The Splatana while nowhere near as bad as the Tri Slinger, is still a mediocre weapon.
It's essentially trying to combine a splat roller (specially carbon) and a mid-range shooter while miserably failing at both.
As a shooter its pretty good at turfing but for fighting it's low accuracy and weak shots (4 hit kill) with a pretty average or even below average fire rate, it's very mediocre. At mid range it's losing to every shooter and at close range, with this firing mode in particular, it's also losing because of its slow firerate and low accuracy. I had multiple point blank interactions where I would take a couple of hits from this weapon but still win the interaction somehow. With any other shooter, brush or roller; I would be dead.
The charge mode is probably the best part of the weapon but sadly also bad.
It's a decently fast charge probably the same speed as a vertical swing from a splat roller, but the difference is it only one shots if you're basically point blank on your target otherwise it's a two shot kill.
And again you can't store your charge and theres no horizontal equivalent like a roller has.
Not to mention a roller has a much more generous kill range with its swings that will just outright kill you - the splatana doesn't have that. It's not a good mid range shooter nor a decent rushdown melee weapon.
Either buff these weapons across the board, rework them, or both, whatever makes them not garbage at launch.

Tri Color Mode: This mode was a neat idea on paper but it just devolved into the pair teams fighting each other while the mid team beating them while they do it.
Make it so you can't hit your "teammates" and I'll probably enjoy this mode alot more.
I just found it ridiculous how so many interactions I would help my teammate and he would just shoot me immediately after.

Overall I had a lot of fun with the splatfest demo but I still don't think we needed a Sequel for Splatoon 2 by any means. A lot of these ideas felt like they could've just been free updates, the game isn't doing much to differentiate itself from 2 for me and for that reason I'm passing on this.