I'm gonna be real here, this game did not deserve to win Multiplayer game of the year 2022 at the Game Awards LOL.

Splatoon 3 is quite possibly the textbook definition of the term "going through the motions". A game purely content squeaking by doing the bare minimum, and somehow still fumbling even that. For those of you keeping score, we are currently on the third installment in the Splatoon franchise, and a particular installment that released on the lifespan of the exact same console that the second game did, and the multiplayer has not fundamentally changed or evolved in any meaningful way. Some of you might see this statement and retort "well what's the big deal? If it ain't broke, don't fix, right?", except no. There's a lot of aspects that Splatoon's multiplayer contained that ARE broke, and they aren't fixed at all from previous entries. Like, for instance, the map rotation system: only being allowed to play 2 maps every 2 hours. Not only is this mind numbingly repetitive, playing the same map (and for ranked gameplay, the same maps and modes) over and over and over again, but as I'll get into later on in the review, the maps themselves aren't even good to begin with. Even the Overwatch team ended up realizing that map pools are a bad idea and eventually did away with them altogether during Overwatch 2. Splatoon 3 currently has substantially less content in comparison and yet it still decides to...limit content at the same time? I genuinely don't get it. But that's not even the worst of it, no. The worst part of Splatoon 3's multiplayer is that it's so agonizingly SLOOOOOOOW. Not necessarily in terms of getting into and out of a match, these elements are fine. I'm talking purely progression, leveling up, getting new weapons, gear and clothing items. First off even if you've already played Splatoon 2 before (which the game does recognize if you have save data from that game or not and unlocks ranked mode early because of it), the game STILL insists on gatekeeping literally everything from you and pulls the "oh you need to be at least level 4 to get anything" garbage. Leveling up in any capacity, whether it be your player level or your catalogue level takes ages. If I need to play like 30+ matches back to back with a double XP buff activated from a snack ticket and I still haven't gotten from level 7 to 8 yet, that's a bit of a major problem. Progressing in any capacity in this game is a massive grind, an issue they still haven't really addressed since the first game. Even when you DO level up it doesn't really feel like you've accomplished anything, it feels like you've waded through a thick waist high swamp for about 3 hours, you get to the surface to grab a bit of candy as a reward, and afterwards you gotta do the whole wading game all over again. I wouldn't go so far as to label it as an endurance test, but man that's really what it feels like sometimes. 3 being a dated grind fest that barely feels any different than the other entries in any way shape or form would be one thing, but if you ask me it also managed to make multiplayer elements of the previous games even worse if you ask me. The matchmaking for instance is all types of borked. You either queue into matches were you absolutely stomp the enemy team, or you're the ones getting stomped. Those are the two extremes, no in between. It's basically been every single match. Turf war either feels too lethargic and easy or too sweaty and tryhard. On top of this, too many matches get canceled completely because someone disconnected last second immediately after a match started. I kid you not, 3 matches in a row were canceled because someone DC'd, further compounding the sluggish grindy progression system.

The worst offense out of all of what they changed, however, are the new maps. The map design in this game for whatever reason took a massive hit and pretty much 90% of them are the exact same in terms of design philosophy: linear hallways funneling everyone into the center where team fights typically break out. It's bad enough that the maps are all designed like straight shots with barely any room to add creative high ground opportunities or vertical structures (in fact half of the map areas are unable to be inked at all), but it's even worse that we're basically stuck with 2 of these maps at a time for 2 hours. I genuinely cannot think of a single aspect that Splatoon 3 added to improve the multiplayer experience outside of being able to practice your weapon in the lobby room. I legitimately was just not having fun with 3's incredibly lackluster multiplayer experience. Outside of multiplayer, Salmon Run is essentially unchanged, just with a few additional mini bosses. You do get an addition of a ton of new cosmetics to collect and equip, and the catalogue is the equivalent of a battle pass (though thankfully it's free with no option to pay for it). There's also a brand new card game that I must've played for a grand total of 5 times before never touching the thing again. Here's the thing: by the third game, you should have something that innovates and improves upon the previous products. Splatoon 3 doesn't really do anything to innovate and improve on what came before, instead content to cruise by not really doing much of anything. It's quite ironic, in fact, how much this game uses the term "fresh" despite nothing about this game containing anything of the sort. That is except for one thing of course: the campaign.

Yeah, I was as surprised as you were. The campaigns of the previous Splatoon games were a whole lot of nothing. Meandering excuses to give the games single player content and nothing else. It took until the Octo Expansion DLC for the single player to become something interesting. And wouldn't you know it, but the story mode of this game is a lot like Octo Expansion! I do like how it's a complete bait and switch too: it makes you think you're just playing a typical point A to point B level based campaign just like the previous 2 games, until after you face the first boss, the game completely pulls the rug out from under you and fully reveals the cards in its hand. It's a challenge based story mode with a variety of gimmicks and objectives for each stage, the hub worlds that hold these stages are filled with secret items and text logs for added lore, you even get a fully fledged skill tree! A lot of challenges were also crafted for a lot of the special weapons: for instance, that borderline useless Zipcaster special weapon in the multiplayer has challenges built around zipping from building to building in a snappy fashion, it's a lot of fun. The bosses could stand to be a bit better and the game kind of ends up lore dumping everything on you at the end when I felt it could've been more evenly spaced out, but I'm surprised at how much fun I had with Splatoon 3's campaign.

In a way, this is an interesting though unfortunate inverse of Splatoon 2; wheras that game had a mediocre forgettable single player campaign with a beefy and fun multiplayer, this game has a fun and inventive single player campaign with a sluggish dull overly grind-y multiplayer. Sucks that it had to leave the portion of Splatoon that by far has the most amount of content out for the wolves. Perhaps they'll finally start to improve and innovate the multiplayer when the inevitable 4th entry happens, because if they don't then I'll REALLY be in a state of utter dumbfounded shock. Or maybe I won't. Kind of hard to tell at this point.

Do not spend $60 on this game. I would hope they discounted it by now but I don't know.

Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in!

The idea of playing the (almost) entirety of the WarioWare catalogue this year was one I’m really glad I went through, it turned out to be a fantastic experience and a made me gain new-found appreciation for this series that I never had before, not even after playing Get It Together a few years back, but it was also a very out of nowhere decision, which kinda fits considering what games we are dealing with, but imagine my sheer surprise and excitement when I saw that Move It! was announced; the timing couldn’t be better, and considering this seemed to be heavily be influenced by Smooth Moves, I was extremely excited to see what they pulled of for their third (technically fourth) fully original home-console WarioWare, and after playing it I can say for sure… that they did Jimmy-T dirty as hell this time around, he gets barely any dialogue and some of the most disappointing micro-games are his, how could they do this to him… how could HE do this to ME?!

It feels extremely weird to me that this released only now and after Get It Together, ‘cause this feels like something that would have launched during 2017’s summer or even the console’s launch. I think no other game in the Switch’s library has used the Joy-Cons to their fullest potential other than this one (Aside of 1-2 Switch, I guess…), and the same thing with Smooth Moves repeats here where it feels more gimmicky than any other of the WarioWare games, but similarly to that game, that doesn’t get in the way of it being yet again another dose of the stupidest fun you could possibly have. It once again invites you act stupidly, to be irreverent and whacky, and it that it succeeds, I’d argue to an even greater degree than Smooth Moves ever did; the poses and their explanations return, this time under the context of legends of the island, and the creativity is commendable and, how else, pretty fucking funny. The micro-games are pure fire, specially the first batches, they are as dumb as ever and easy to understand and just a joy to watch a play, and here we have some of the best boss mini-games in the entirety of the series… but also some really weak ones. Yeah, similarly to Smooth Moves, there are some really high highs and really jarring lows, and while the overall quality of micro-games is far better in Move It!, at least in its Wii counterpart it felt like everything worked; one problem with being far more experimental and daring is that trying to use technology that really can’t keep up, it’s gonna be clear as day that something is amiss, and no there are no better examples of it that the joy-con camera and how the things’ gyroscope acts in certain poses; there are some truly inspired and fantastic micro-games and stands, they are the majority in fact, but I can’t deny that the few that feel unresponsive or undercooked left a bad taste in my mouth, and I imagine that the reason that this game is so forgiving even after losing all 4 lives is that they knew all of this but really couldn’t find a way to make it work.

Well, with all of that said, let’s see what else there is to say… uhmmm…. Huh…….. oh……. Oh I see… Here’s the thing, Move It! is very much designed to be a party games, which, let’s ignore that you need a pair of joy cons for each player which makes it hell to play if other people don’t have a switch themselves or you don’t have a spare pair (which makes sense because… you know, 80 bucks is a bit crazy), even ignoring that, right out the bat for most players a huge portion of the game will be immediately impossible to play, which makes that, aside of the story mode, the extra single player modes you have to play are a bunch of I independent minigames, the three difficulty animal towers and… that’s…. it… Smooth Moves divided its content in a very similar manner to this, but at least having two Wii-Motes was far more plausible than having two pairs of joy-cons, and it still have a ton of modes and minigames unlocked right out the gate before you even beat the story mode. I’m not asking content comparable to Twisted and Gold, but I’m asking anything, you could have added the online components that Get It Together had but… not, no they did not. And, again, Smooth Moves has a similar issue to, but to go and try to replicate the exact same structure of that game EVEN more is weird, and not the good kind of weird. It doesn’t feel even like a sequel, but rather like that they tried to replicate a past success and, don’t get me wrong, in a lot of ways it works, but it also leaves Move it! feeling a bit hollow, not derivative, but it does feel devoid of uniqueness aside from its setting, and similarly with the game over thing, I wonder id that change of style and location is also a patch to cover another glaring issue with the game’s… in this case existence, I guess.
Move It! has fantastic micro-games, fantastic style, and it even has dinosaurs and penguins, but that can’t stop it from just feeling like the first game in the franchise that seems just like more of the same, more so than the game that consists on recycling content from past games. It’s still the better of the Switch Wario games and far better than something like Touched, but at least that one felt unique enough to have a ton to talk about, even if it wasn’t that great. I plan on playing every 2-player mode in the future as soon as I can, and I’ll probably talk about it again when that time comes, but for now, as far as WarioWare games and a single player experiences come, it’s still a really good one, but if falls short by its own nature, and even if I don’t regret playing it at all, I can’t see myself coming back to it when there are so many greater options within the same series… and you know, there’s a clear responsible for all of this… JIMMY!

I know he messed with the poses, I knew how they worked; as if I could ever make such mistakes after busting it down in Smooth Moves, never, NEVER! I just… I just can’t check it in the console settings, he covered his tracks and made that stupid-ass boss game terrible to make me look bad on purpose, and that’s not all! The AR Camera… you think a camera just happens to suck fucking doo-doo balls like that? NO! He orchestrated it! JIMMY! He used a shark as a surfboard! And to think I was a fan, I promoted him as the best WarioWare character! But I shouldn’t have… Saved my best shitty jokes for him, what was I thinking?! Ever since the GBA he was planning it, he was planning this take us all down! And HE gets this drawn out really shitty mess of reference?! What a sick joke! I should have switched to play Wario Land when I had the chance, he will always be Tenacious Jimmy, he- HEY, I’M NOT CRAZY, I’M NOT CRA-