Nintendo has a bit of a reputation for changing things up significantly with sequels. Major new Mario games often feature new gimmicks and mechanics, and we’re always left to wait years between Zelda games, despite the fact that Nintendo could get away with pumping them out Assassin’s Creed style if it so wished. Some franchises sit dormant in part because developers are struggling to come up with a sufficiently new and fresh idea. But Splatoon ain’t F-Zero – and it’s thriving with a different, arguably more traditional approach.
Nintendo habits are somewhat bucked in Splatoon 3, which continues on from both of its predecessors in a more gently iterative way than is the norm for Nintendo. This is a slightly different approach to most Nintendo sequels – this will be the third Splatoon in seven years, quite a quick pace for a Nintendo franchise – but it fits what Splatoon is.
Specifically, it fits the game’s emergence as a competitive powerhouse and online multiplayer success quite well. To some degree it might feel slightly outdated – other online shooters are going free-to-play with battle passes and DLC – while Splatoon is serving up yet another sequel. At the same time, however, there’s a pleasure to this sort of release: you know what you’re getting in your box or download, and know that it’ll be well-supported with events and updates for a reliable period of time post-release, just as the first and second games in this series were.
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