Splatoon’s single-player modes have never been great, so when the single-player-focused spinoff Splatoon Raiders was announced last year, fans were a bit worried. The game has kind of been an enigma, too. Fans weren’t exactly sure what it was, and Nintendo had been fairly cagey about showing off its content. That’s finally changing, and what we’re learning about the latest Switch 2 exclusive is winning me over.
After watching today’s Splatoon Raiders Direct (and the Treehouse presentation that followed), I’m thrilled to say that it seems like the game just might be shaping up to be exactly the kind of single-player Splatoon experience we sickos have been waiting over a decade for. Nintendo showed off the intricacies of Raiders, and it seems really neat. Last time we got a peek at the game, Nintendo warned us it would be hard, but today’s Direct really emphasized the new level of challenge it wants to offer.
Salmonids, the enemies from the series’s Salmon Run side mode, are returning in Raiders and are seemingly more threatening than before. There are also some freaky variants that even the Direct announcer got pretty riled up about, and the waves of salmonids shown off during the Treehouse look downright punishing. (There’s even a Pikmin-inspired boss with a giant roller that seems to be just as terrifying and unstoppable as its muse.)
To help players counter these challenges, everything about Raiders is wildly customizable. Beyond a few difficulty options and some very sick outfits, you can upgrade your tanks, add abilities to your gadgets, and even upgrade your headquarters to add…new features that let you customize things even more.
I’m looking forward to tinkering with the in-game gadgets to put together precise builds that can plow through as many Salmonids as possible, and it seems like there will be plenty of satisfying synergies to discover. It seems like it’s also slated to spawn some inevitably ridiculous clips filmed by players who have figured out how exactly to min-max these gadgets.
There’s also a co-op mode, which we got a first look at today. Players can even ask random players for help or, on the flip side, jump in to assist other players in exchange for unique rewards, which seems like a neat way to break up the time when things get tedious.
What I’m most excited about, though, is what beloved stingray Big Man has to offer. The fan-favorite idol keeps track of your collections, and between relics, salmonid research, gadgets, weapons, and lore-filled scrolls, there’s a lot to collect. A brief peek at the corner of the screen during the Treehouse event revealed that there are a whopping 107 gadget upgrades to unlock! 107! Yay!
I am a little iffy on the ethics of, you know, going to an island and taking treasures from its native inhabitants, though. I’m curious to see if Nintendo reckons with this at all via the game’s story—the series has never shied away from slyly tackling darker themes (segregation, genocide, a climate-change-caused apocalypse that resulted in the extinction of humans), so I’m not counting Raiders out on that front.
Questionable optics aside, all of this is exactly what I’ve been waiting for while halfheartedly trudging through the rest of Splatoon’s single-player stuff. I’ve always been a big Splatoon freak, but I’ve never felt like I’ve been able to fully dedicate myself to a demanding single-player grind. Raiders, with all of its weird customization options and avenues for completionists, seems like it might finally be the Splatoon single-player story that gets me hooked.
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