CUbic787

A gigantic leap backwards. Junked an engine that, although old, was a good match for the Switch, meaning gameplay always felt smooth and consistent. Bringing in a new engine halves the performance for no real benefit. The newer career mode brings in a bunch of pointless objectives that interfere with playing the game the way you want. UT, aside from being a scam, has basic interface elements broken (e.g. not being able to leave the Evolutions tab without restarting the game).

A solid game that would easily reach 7 or 8 on the strength of its theming, characters, and worlds were it not for the downright awful combat system.

STRONGLY RECOMMEND turning player shadows off, most cutscenes/replays off and crowd quality to low - the drop in visual quality (let's face it, you're not playing the Switch version for visual quality) is worth avoiding the regular performance dips. I can only recommend this one if you're already an AFL fan who only has a Switch and even then it's risky. Developers are still yet to figure out how to make an AFL game with anything even remotely approaching intuitive controls and satisfying gameplay. But as long as you come in with low expectations this can still be pretty fun.

It's just alright. Arena mode is a decent party game, adventure mode is a decent solo experience. All the other modes aren't really worth trying. The controls feel a bit unfair and imprecise at times. Interesting cast of characters. Not terrible, not great.

A bold, solid attempt at twisting up the basic Splatoon concept that falls short of Nintendo's previous efforts. The first run or two up are fun, but get repetitive very quickly. Nintendo repeats the annoying trick of forcing the player to prove mastery with multiple weapons to progress. However, once you've pushed through this valley, the campaign oddly starts to get fun again, only now the fun comes from coming up with your own challenge runs/weapon builds. The story is lacklustre, especially compared to 2's DLC. The bosses are the worst we've seen in Splatoon so far: too easy to pose a genuine threat but frustratingly time-consuming. The difficulty is not well-calibrated and the incentive to voluntarily take on more challenge is not tantalising enough (at least until the stage where you've exhausted the in-game rewards and are just messing around). This review reads more negatively than my actual experience - although there are a lot of problems, I still had a great time overall, which goes to show the quality of Splatoon's core experience.

A diamond **** that has been ruthlessly, painstakingly carved into its perfect form. Forces you into meaningful decisions each turn without being unfair or hostile - you always know exactly what your enemy is up to, it's on you to find some way to use your incredible array of tools to stop them. Extremely replayable.