Splatoon Raiders: The Kotaku Review

is over a decade old? It’s kind of nuts that in that time we’ve gotten three main entries, plus now a new single-player-centric variation on the theme in

Editorial callout

". Nintendo has been rightfully praised for its interpretation of the competitive shooter, a genre that if you had asked me ahead of"

’s announcement, I would have said Nintendo cannot and will not ever play in. But it has, and been riotously successful with it. While the main three

games had single-player campaigns,

is Nintendo’s first proper attempt to take a stab at what a meaty, mission-based shooter looks like.

, you’re probably not that worried about how well it’s going to translate. You certainly shouldn’t be.

sends a trio of treasure hunters (who moonlight as a band) and their pilot-turned-mechanic out to a set of deserted islands said to be full of sick loot. These islands are also full of Salmonids, a group of sapient life forms that exist in the same world as

’s Octolings and Inklings but who, for some reason, are not treated as reasoning beings and are instead largely shot on sight with ink guns that kill them. Look, this is a goofy and lighthearted Nintendo game, and the dev team clearly just regards the Salmonids as thoughtless monsters. But it is

to give them a clearly expansive culture with art and music and society, publish a dev interview about how internally everyone felt bad about murdering them, and then commit to it anyway. I was sort of hoping for at least an attempt at a better explanation for recreational colonialism than

It may just generally be folly to expect more from a