You will often read here and there that the Splatoon single-player campaigns serve as giant multiplayer tutorials. This is not entirely false, but they continue to expand over the episodes. The Octo Expansion, whose exclusively single-player content has been unanimously praised, has definitely restored the game's lore to its former glory. This trend continues with Splatoon 3, which offers us a solid and well-done campaign. There is nothing extraordinary about the initial purpose, however, since it is based once again on the disappearance of the Great Fish-Charge, responsible for supplying the city with energy. Ads also advise to turn off the lights and lower the heating (any resemblance to current events is purely coincidental...). Would DJ Octave once again be responsible for this chaos? We let you discover this for yourselves, but we can still tell you that the scenario offers a bit more twists and turns than usual.
The main playground is called Alterna, is home to Octarians covered in furs as well as a "shaggy mush" blocking certain accesses, and is made up of six snowy islands, which are all sectors to explore in order to unlock many small missions. These allow us to test the different weapons and basic principles of the game, starting naturally with the transformation into a squid which allows you to swim in the ink that is spread on the sets. We thus find there the famous aspect of “giant tutorial”, but the campaign is not limited to that. The missions ask us in turn to solve little puzzles, to make the best use of our little "salmioche" companion, to emerge victorious from various confrontations, to show skill and a sense of timing, or even to master the different mechanics hidden in the sets (switches to activate, sponges to inflate, ink rollers to unroll, and many other things). Some levels even have some gameplay twists in store for us, like this maze that you have to go through horizontally, then vertically thanks to the traces of paint left on the first pass. The icing on the cake: this single-player mode allows you to obtain Documents and History fragments that teach us a lot more about the world of Splatoon.
THE OCTOPUS NOT NEW
This concern for storytelling is even found in the new hub city making the link between solo and multiplayer, and judiciously called Cité-Clabousse. The latter indeed lives to the rhythm of the announcements of Pasquale, Angie and Raimi, a trio of TV presenters not stung by beetles. On the other hand, it must be admitted that visually, Cité-Clabousse differs little from the Chromapolis of Splatoon and Splatoon 2. We can also extend this remark to the graphics in general, which do not progress in any way compared to the previous episode. In terms of technique and artistic direction, the series is treading water and taking no risks. And come on, dare we say it, in truth so is the whole experience. Splatoon plays the security card a little too much, struggles to surprise, and offers nothing truly revolutionary compared to its predecessors. As Macalamar himself says, word for word at the start of the single-player campaign: "Isn't there an air of deja-vu?". Fortunately and obviously, there are still several new things to get your teeth into here and there. Two new main weapons thus complete an already well-stocked arsenal. The Piercer is a bow that fires a salvo of projectiles horizontally by default and vertically when jumping, while the Shardana shoots long-range sprays of ink and has a charged shot for melee. -body.
Unpublished special weapons are also part of the game (districool, sonar paf and cavalsquale) while new maps come to bring the total of playgrounds to twelve. This already very honorable quantity is also expected to increase over the free updates planned for the coming months. The main game modes include the essential Territory War (where each team must cover as much ground as possible with its ink), Risky Expedition (where you have to accompany a mobile stand to the opposing camp), Mission Bazookarpe (which asks us to grab the bazookarp weapon), Clam Rain (which emphasizes collecting and throwing shells), the explicit Zone Defense and the cooperative Salmon Run, which welcomes new types of enemies. The real novelties are therefore mainly hidden in the details, like the two new small movements (breaking to propel oneself when climbing a painted wall, and spinning to turn around), friends who appear in the form of holograms in the lobby, the personal locker, or even the possibility of replaying the matches, which are automatically recorded by the game. Very practical for studying the reasons for a failure or a victory! Finally, Splatoon 3 has Maps and Territory, a simple but very nice mini-game. It consists of filling a grid with ink using cards to project different shapes. Knowing that there are more than 150 cards to collect, we are dealing with a mini-game that is still relatively strong. Thanks to its multiple aspects (solo, multi, game-service, unlockable equipment, mini-game and others), Splatoon 3 is also the most complete Splatoon to date. This does not prevent, as you will have understood, a certain lack of audacity.
