00:02Splatoon has always featured single-player campaigns, but they've never been the focus.
00:07Often they're glorified tutorials, and even when they venture into more clever puzzle platformer
00:12territory, it's been a relatively short side dish to the competitive multiplayer main course.
00:18Splatoon Raiders looks to address this by putting the single-player focus front and center.
00:24Multiplayer is here, but it's de-emphasized and co-op only.
00:29In some ways, that makes Raiders the mirror image of Splatoon games.
00:33I recently tried out Splatoon Raiders, sampling some of the early game progression along with a later
00:38co-op raid in multiplayer. While this is still undeniably a Splatoon game, it's a very different
00:44one with particular emphasis on making a build that feels downright broken as you take down
00:49increasingly tough hordes of Salmonids. To start, you have your regular arsenal that is largely
00:56recognizable from previous Splatoon games. Your regular paint blasters that fire like traditional
01:01guns, along with more inventive paint sloshing weaponry like rollers and sloshers, which cover
01:07the ground and paint more quickly. I stuck mostly with the traditional weapons, mostly because I was
01:13just learning the ropes, but also because weapons like rollers just seemed less useful in this context.
01:19Those are great for a team composition in multiplayer Splatoon where your goal is to cover as much
01:25ground with paint as possible, but their utility is less obvious in a PvE game that's focused on
01:32taking down enemies. You do still need to cover the ground and paint to quickly move around the
01:37battlefields, but the combat zones are relatively small, so covering them completely isn't as important.
01:42There may be use cases I just didn't find in my limited time, however.
01:47Aside from your regular weapons, you also have gadgets, which are sorted into three tank types.
01:53Power, speed, and tactical. You have to pick just one of those categories to use, but you can swap
01:59between stages. All of your gadgets fall under one of those three buckets, and you can equip two of them
02:05at a time within that category, mapping them to the shoulder buttons. The tactical kit has an auto
02:15turret for example, while the power set lets you generate a spinning array of ink blobs that circle
02:20around you and deal damage to enemies. At first I was cautious about my gadget use, saving them for
02:26bigger engagements, but the cooldown is quick and the salmonids are ferocious. It's clear that Splatoon
02:32Raiders wants you to use them liberally, so after getting warmed up a bit, I was hitting my spinning
02:37power attack at every opportunity, acting like a passive damage dealing shield to complement my shooting.
02:47I knew then and there that my ultimate goal would be to reduce the cooldown and extend the effect time
02:53as much as possible to make it, if not infinite, at least as close as possible. It's not really Vampire
02:59Survivors, but it's not not Vampire Survivors. Upgrading and supporting your gadget loadout is
03:04the major driver in the loot loop of Splatoon Raiders. As you level up your character, you can
03:10upgrade their health or damage, but also their capacity for gadget modifiers. Most of the loot you
03:16find in the stages are different modifiers for your gadgets to let you upgrade damage or tweak its effects.
03:21It is a very flexible system, and even in my limited time, I could see the potential for building out
03:27a
03:27combo of traditional weapons and powered up gadgets that feels OP, at least until you hit the next
03:33challenge milestone. Rounding out your combat options are relics, equippable items with even
03:39bigger effects like enabling a double jump. Finally, you can bring one of your deep cut crew with you to
03:44pilot the protective machine that accompanies you into each mission, and which one you pick determines a
03:50charged-up ultimate showstopper attack that you actually should save for boss encounters.
03:59All of these options come together to make your perfect little inkling-killing machine,
04:03venturing out into an array of islands that unlock across new islands as you complete
04:08story missions on the world map. These missions function like battle arenas with some light platforming
04:13elements. You might need to cull over your cohort to give you a boost, but for the most part,
04:17these seem to be traveling between skirmishes. Those play out like horde battles with massive
04:22numbers of Salmonids attacking you, along with new seasoned Salmonids that are visibly covered with
04:29salt and are much tougher than their regular counterparts. From the little that I played,
04:34Splatoon Raiders gets mileage out of even just the handful of Salmonids I encountered by both
04:40increasing the numbers of the horde and rearranging its pieces. One Salmonid occupies a giant tower
04:46that has to be cut down to size before you can defeat it, another is a giant lumbering brute,
04:52and so on. One stage may require you to take on just one of each, while another strategically
04:57positions the sniper tower so it's difficult to reach one without being exposed to the other.
05:02Another Wrinkle might add a bigger, slower boss to deal with, forcing tense decision-making about which
05:07threats to eliminate first. It can get chaotic, but that's what makes it so satisfying to use all the
05:14combat options at your disposal to mop up the battlefield. There is a general sense that Splatoon
05:19Raiders is an example of Nintendo using every part of the buffalo as the saying goes. The character
05:25designs, some enemies, weapons, and the world of Splatoon are well-established, of course, but I was
05:31surprised to be reminded of the recent Donkey Kong Bonanza. This game doesn't have Bonanza's
05:35destructibility, but you end stages by mining crystals, and the clink-clink of collecting them
05:40very much reminded me of Donkey Kong's latest, as did the concept of drilling into the ground to
05:46progress into a deeper cave in some stages. We also tried a multiplayer skirmish, which was,
05:52as you might expect, a lot more frantic with more enemies to match the increased player count.
05:57Though, as with single-player missions, you're moving around the map a good deal more to find
06:01different engagements, and your prize is new gadget modifiers for loot. The real treat here was seeing
06:07how players could start to synergize with each other. My power-focused build was good for getting
06:13in close to enemies and dealing heavy damage, but I wasn't especially hardy, so I could rely on my
06:19teammates to take some of the heat off, while venturing into the thick of the enemy horde.
06:24Combined with the wealth of options for your gadgets and gear, multiplayer seems like a fertile ground for
06:29high-level raids against tough opponents, which would then cash out with appropriately better loot.
06:38Splatoon Raiders has a nice combat loop built around grinding for loot to get stronger and then
06:43using that to experiment with new builds and take on even tougher foes. That seems like more than enough
06:50to sustain it through a story campaign. The lingering question in my mind is how much longevity the
06:55co-op multiplayer will have to sustain continued raids with your friends after you've wrapped up most of
07:02the challenges. Previous Splatoon games were built with long-term competitive multiplayer in mind, with all
07:08the infinite replayability that comes with it. The switch to a single-player focus may mean that Splatoon
07:14Raiders is content to let you finish the campaign and be done with it, so it remains to be seen
07:19if co-op
07:20raids for ever-increasing builds will give it similarly long legs. That makes it a big chance for a series
07:26built on
07:26multiplayer, but as someone who has always wanted a more focused single-player Splatoon experience,
07:32I'm excited to see it finally deliver.
07:36Splatoon Raiders
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