When Splatoon Raiders was announced, I’ll admit I was skeptical. The magic of the Splatoon series is steeped in the antics Inklings and Octolings would get into during heated PvP matches, and how these antics would solve themselves on any given stage. Fans returned for these antics three times over in mainline installations, with each title in the series giving players more options to paint the town (and each other) with.
Splatoon Raiders flips that formula on its head, asking players to unload their paint on the nefarious Salmonids instead of facing off against each other, in the name of treasure hunting. So, when I was offered a chance to get behind the tank of the mechanic on the Spirhalite Islands, I grabbed a paint can and suited up. Although my time with Splatoon Raiders was brief, it was an absolute blast in action.
Splatoon Raiders kicks off with the Deep Cut trio (composed of Shiver, Frye, and Big Man) sailing a helicopter into uncharted territory. For the uninitiated, Deep Cut was introduced as the news personality trio in Splatoon 3 — taking over for Splatoon 2’s Off The Hook — and in Raiders, they’re off to the mysterious Spirhalite Islands in search of treasure due to whispers the trio has read in an article that said the sunken islands have resurfaced.
Unfortunately, while they read the article, Deep Cut didn’t read the weather report and flew their helicopter into a water tornado. Helicopters and tornadoes notoriously don’t mesh well (go figure), so the trio and their pilot mechanic find themselves washed up on one of the isolated resurfaced Spirhalite Islands. In Splatoon Raiders, you embody the mechanic (and the pilot who crashed, but no one blames you). Splatoon Raiders picks up one month from this mishap, and the team has found their bearings on a Hideout Ship, your base of operations.
“Although my time with Splatoon Raiders was brief, it was an absolute blast in action.”
In Splatoon 3, players have control over shaping their very own Inkling/Octoling, down to their hairstyle and facial appearance, and Raiders lets you do the same. Funny enough, I was even able to give my character notable pigtails, wrapped in what appears to be an old-school Nintendo Wii RCA cable. After I chose the option most relatable to my real-life chord management, Splatoon Raiders injects you straight into the Spirhalite Islands via a tutorial. While Splatoon players will feel right at home here, Nintendo emphasized an in-depth tutorial for first-timers to get their bearings.
In Splatoon Raiders, your mission is to find treasure on each expedition, and very much like the Salmon Run mini-game introduced in Splatoon 2, you will be tasked with collecting items like Power Eggs to complete levels. Unlike Splatoon 2, it appears this time Inklings are the invading force on the Salmonid home turf. Like in Helldivers 2 this makes it feel like you’re the bad guy, but in Splatoon Raiders you’re just searching for treasure. Salmonids just happen to be in the way, and they just happen to live here.
Splatoon Raiders Outfits You For Battle!
The same fundamental moving system from all Splatoon titles is here. You can shoot paint, dive into your own paint while filling your tank, and swim through a level mostly made of solids while treating water as lava, and it feels incredible in Raiders. Unlike other Splatoon titles, Raiders gives you a loadout screen that allows you to essentially make your own build to attack each stage with. You can choose between a tactical tank, a power tank and a speed tank to meld your loadout to your chosen playstyle.
While it would have been simple to tag weapons to classes and let players choose, Raiders takes the extra mile and has introduced new paint-filled items to make a mess of any Spirhalite Islands battlefield, and they’re called Gadgets. Gadgets help you craft chaos and push back the Salmonids with force. The developers at Nintendo pulled out all the stops to make this feel as close to a chaotic bullet-storm as possible. Each gadget is specific to your chosen ink tank, so Raiders can’t feel like hybrid-class god characters (like in every Bethesda game). Mechanics are forced to stay in their role each mission once chosen, and that role can be changed at the Hideout Ship at any given time.
Like Returnal’s Atropian Blade, each gadget has a cooldown, and you can really tinker with your loadout to reduce this as much as possible. This emphasis on build-making and daring the player to break the game’s systems had me thinking “Splat-urnal” the whole time, and that’s a good thing in practice. Once I selected the very purple-ink-bearing tactical tank, I was ready to jump into which gadgets could make life easier on treasure-hunting expeditions.
While Legend of Zelda fanatics may gravitate towards the speed tank and its boomerang-inspired Booyarang (you can throw it, and it makes a mess while returning to you), the power tank deploys the destructive (and equally pun-heavy) Splatellite that orbits the player when activated and beats down any Salmonids that come near. My favourite in practice was the Shot Pot turret. This gadget (exclusive to the tactical tank) serves as a stationary turret, taking the aggression off the player for precious moments.
“Splatoon Raiders flips that formula on its head, asking players to unload their paint on the nefarious Salmonids instead of facing off against each other.”
All gadgets can receive notable upgrades, allowing players to tailor their builds to their playstyles. The Shot Pot can be upgraded so you can deploy two at once, or so it explodes when Salmonids destroy it. When these upgrades work, it feels like watching a homemade trap do exactly what it was designed to do, like a paint-equipped Home Alone 2 scene.
Build-making in Splatoon Raiders feels awesome and intuitive. When you craft appropriately, you can seriously lay the surface level on Salmonids without effort, and when you team up with up to three other players in co-op, builds can really help each other out. With this system, players can be their own custom class, and it rocks.
Making a Mess
Splatoon has always felt crisp when it comes to gameplay and movement, and Splatoon Raiders is no different. Moving around the landscape just feels good; diving into and out of ink is full of animation and style, and the sound work in Splatoon Raiders is all top-notch, but the gameplay is a completely different story. Splatoon Raiders is FUN.
After diving into my first mission, I was tasked with collecting up to a certain amount of treasure, and then I could break the big ore to finish the level, or I could risk it and try to gain extra rewards before breaking the crystal to increase my earnings. While sticking around may be a risk, the rewards could be staggering near the end of levels, but it’s a good thing to know your limitations. It’s worth noting that there are difficulty options in Splatoon Raiders, but a higher difficulty doesn’t mean better rewards (unfortunately); it’s only there to level the playing field for more skilled Inklings.
With my tactical tank, Oil Blaster and Shot Pot + Bombloons combo, I hit my first mission running. Unlike many other games that fit the Splatoon Raiders mould, each chosen level is impeccably designed and doesn’t feature random generation, and it shows. There are precisely placed platforming segments and sections designed to make the player think. In one mission, I had to activate three totems before claiming a treasure. Nintendo made sure to include variety, so activities don’t get stale.
While trying to activate a totem, a specialized version of a Salmonid appeared (an eel-looking paint snake), and this train of swampy paint needed to be hit at its tail end to be brought down. Many salmonids will feature weak spots, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s a delicate balancing act to juggle gadget cooldowns, Salmonid swarms, weak spots, and your own health/ink gauge while staying in the action. Splatoon Raiders may feel like Splatoon in every way, but it’s a true crucible against the CPU this time around.
“Splatoon Raiders may feel like Splatoon in every way, but it’s a true crucible against the CPU this time around.”
There are other challenge stages called Dungeons, and these ask you to test your builds and defeat Salmonids in a time limit to get to the end. Dungeons almost always cap off with a stronger variant of Salmonid with more devastating move sets, so you will have your work cut out for you. On the other hand, Nintendo made sure to include even more variety of stages to keep things fresh. There are other challenges that require you to use a given loadout and tank to get through them with an unfamiliar setup.
With the Shot Pot and Bombloons, I was able to distract a UFO-piloting Salmonid and toss a Bombloon at its weak point to bring it down. Normally, you would have to walk under the abduction area of the ray to get the Salmonid to lower its height, but with the proper loadout, you can do some serious Salmonid sweeping without following all the rules.
Bombloons can also be tossed with patterns in mind and detonated like floating paint C4. This deals a mouth-watering amount of damage, and when you combine this with the tactical tank’s Hi-Fiver (another gadget, but this one tethers enemies in place while dealing pip-damage), Salmonids are trapped, waiting for doom.
This is another solid game-type inclusion that gives mechanics tools to try out other builds without having to think about it. While Splatoon Raiders can be described as “point your gun here and shoot,” Nintendo has stapled a slew of systems and in-depth systems that add layers of complexity to the equation, and it all works great in practice. Splatoon Raiders may feel chaotic, and its release is still a month out, but it feels incredibly polished, and its systems make it impossible to put down.
Making a Mess With Friends
Luckily, I was able to try co-op with a crew of three other Inklings/Octolings, and what ensued was chaotic. The team had a jumble of power, speed, and tactical tanks, along with an abundance of gadgets, so coordinating properly was difficult (especially because of the laughter), but taking down Salmonids as a crew makes Splatoon Raiders feel like a brand-new game.
Instead of focusing on making yourself an unbeatable juggernaut of vandalism, you work with a team and combine your strengths to get the job done. Instead of having to have both Bombloons and Hi-Fiver to get that combo mentioned above off, one player can have the Hi-Fiver, and another can have the Bombloons to create co-op synergy (in case everyone loves the Shot Pot like me). You can even have one player toss a Booyarang into a mess and create a janitor’s worst nightmare.
Splatoon Raiders brings everything Splatoon has to the forefront of its systems. Charm, hilarious puns, an endless mess, and challenging encounters await players daring enough to take up residence on the Spirhalite Islands. With the move (and exclusivity) to the Nintendo Switch 2, Splatoon visuals have vastly improved, and I was even able to notice some of the wear and tear on background glass, the Hideout Ship and the Exploration Bot that helps you dig up treasure. Nintendo pulled out all the stops for Splatoon Raiders, and the worst part is that there are still another three weeks until it launches on July 23. At least I know what I’ll be doing then.
