A short story about my rough start with the Splatoon series

My journey with the Splatoon series was basically non-existent until recently. I found out during the summer of ‘22 when some friends were obsessed with Splatoon 2, and they started telling me that I should check out the game before Splatoon 3 came out.

I ended up getting Splatoon 2 about a month later, but I never got around to actually playing it. After finally playing it to try and get used to the gameplay, I got in a few rounds with my friend, Amy, and… I sucked. I was absolutely terrible at everything about this game. I struggled to ink the ground, swim through the ink, and I could not figure out how to control that damn camera for the life of me.

Safe to say, I sat the game down and wasn’t desperate to get back into the game.

After moving into my new apartment, I was without a PC for a bit, so I was limited to only console games. This, added to the fact that Splatoon 3 was a week away from launch so it was all over my TikTok feed, made me pick up the game again.

Going months without touching the game left me with the same results as before. I was still horrible. But I forced myself to keep playing. I watched some videos about how to actually use the weapon that I wanted and figured out how I liked the camera centered. Even after just a day of playing, I already felt like I was getting better. I had found my weapon, the Splat Roller, and actually started to do well.

I started out by focusing just on covering the turf. I tried to stay away from people because they would always splat me since I didn’t really know how to use the roller to get kills. Once I got comfortable with the movement and using the Splat Roller, I started trying to get into those fights in the middle of the map. Once I started getting consistent kills in games, I really started feeling confident about my skills that I was (very) slowly but surely developing.

I will admit, if I would have ever taken the time to play the single-player campaign, I might have started to improve a lot sooner, but I always jumped into Turf Wars as soon as I started up the game. I only spent about 10 minutes in the single-player mode because even though I found it great and I loved the stages, I just wanted to go and paint with my roller.

When I finally was convinced to move on from Splatoon 2 and buy Splatoon 3, I started playing around with new weapons. I had more people to play with (it was very easy to get my roommate to buy the game and play) so I started experimenting with different play styles along with the new weapons.

I think, after playing consistently, it took roughly a month to become competent at the game. I started out thinking that I could barely play, choosing to stick to a roller because I was scared of others and was content to simply ink turf. Nowadays I main dualies and love to run in and take fights. I took this weapon up when I took the jump into the ranked modes, where battles take a bigger focus compared to just inking turf. I enjoy the mobility that this weapon gives me, the dodge roll is really useful for escaping tough situations, and the special went from one that I hated to one that I love.

This game has gone from one that I could never imagine enjoying, to one that I love and was addicted to for a good two weeks straight. Every time a new event comes out, no matter if it’s a Big Run or a Splatfest, I love jumping back in a binging the game for a weekend.