Splatoon 3: Side Order is a tasty side dish

The meat of the expansion sees you scaling a 30-story tower with the help of Splatoon 2 fan favorites Pearl and Marina, as you aim to find the one responsible for what’s happened to the city and its inhabitants. Each level presents a new challenge, be that defending a small splat zone, or destroying all of the enemy summoning portals in the stage. None of the stages take particularly long, and there are only a few different types of missions available, but the actual number of stage layouts is quite large and whenever I think I’ve seen them all, there’s always a new one on my next attempt.

Each level that you tackle on your trip up the tower also gives you access to a new colour chip, these are the main form of progression that can be found in the tower. You are always given a selection of three different stages to choose from on each level, each of varying difficulty and each with a different colour chip available to collect. Working out which chips work best with your loadout and trying to nab as many of them as possible offers a very satisfying power creep as the elevator slowly ascends the tower. Most of them are passive abilities, increasing weapon damage, ink regeneration and the like, though many of them also work to power up your other main asset, the drone.

Pearl, one half of Splatoon 2’s Off The Hook, takes the form of a drone that accompanies you in each stage. By default there isn’t heaps that she can do; she’s able to point out enemies for you and if you jump off a high ledge you can hold onto her and glide until you hit the ground or attack. This is where the colour chips come in; a lot of them upgrade her abilities instead of yours directly. Pearl can be equipped with sub-weapons like a mini Killer Whale or Splatbombs that set off automatically whenever her meter fills, it’s a great extra hit of damage, and putting most of your chips on her can make her incredibly useful in later stages.

Some of the stages also have additional challenges alongside the main objective and completing one of these stages often nets you two chips instead of just one. These are really interesting and were some of the most difficult levels I encountered. Sometimes you will be challenged to complete a stage without using your main weapon, or without ever walking on your little octoling legs meaning that you have to swim in the ink as much as possible. The challenges are a little more lenient than they sound, usually giving you a buffer on how many times you can actually perform these actions without the challenge being forfeit, which is good, because I can’t imagine the trouble they would be without the leeway.

There are also locker keys that can be collected by defeating a boss, as long as you haven’t beaten them with that weapon before. Opening a locker could potentially give you access to a new palette, these are what determine which weapons you are equipped with for the next climb and what kind of chips you are most likely to get in your next attempt. It’s neat because certain weapon types will benefit more from certain colour chips than others, so increasing the possibility of you finding chips that work best with your current weapon is a clever idea.

Where Side Order really shines though is in its audio design. Selecting options in menus is always accompanied by this tasty click sound that is incredibly satisfying, and the noise that plays each time you add a new colour chip to your palette is so good that I found myself wanting to eat the little things. The music is outstanding as always, but it goes for a much different vibe than the rest of the Splatoon series, leaning far more electronic but still sounding as great as ever. There was not a moment that I wasn’t bopping along to the tunes as I played. Side Order really manages to carve out its own little aesthetic both visually and audibly and it’s so cool to see the team being brave enough to try something different.