Since the recent release of Splatoon 3, fans have been gushing about its new features like lockers, new idols to start religions over and story challenges, while also complaining about and critiquing mechanics of the game and the online communication.

Splatoon 3 is a Nintendo third-person shooter video game released Sept. 9 as a sequel to its popular previous two games on the Wii U and Switch. Splatoon is set in a world where users play as squid and octopus people in a city called Inkopolis, based on Tokyo, Japan. Each game has a pair of idols, a story, a bunch of goods for players to customize themselves into and Splatfests.

Splatoon 3 is located in a new city called the Splatlands, inside the world of Alterna. New features, such as a store to purchase decorations for player lockers, an improved story-mode with challenges similar to Splatoon 2’s DLC, Octo Expansion, a skippable news report and— instead of two idols— three new idols with a brand new Splatfest game mode were advertised and well received.

Idols are important figureheads to the games to not only be merchandise, but to also give news, play roles in story-mode and host Splatfests. In Splatoon 3, instead of two idols, there are three lovable characters to watch and root for; the band is called “Deep Cut,” consisting of Shiver (an octoling,) Frye (an inkling) and Big Man (a mantis).

Splatfests are game events where players can fight on teams against each other to win prizes such as Super Sea Snails, money and experience points. (Super sea snails are items that help improve gear used to battle other players.) You can show your strength and activeness by earning temporary titles which increase your winnings at the end of the event. At Splatfests, Idols give out themes for teams as well as a corresponding color. Today at 7 p.m. will be Splatoon 3’s first Splatfest and the prompt for teams is: what should you bring to a deserted island?

Tri-color mode is a new “half-time game” during Splatfests, a mini-game where three teams split up into two teams of pairs called attackers and a squad of four called defenders. It is similar to a normal game of Turf War, with the goal to cover the most land with ink, but with the new gamemode you have three teams and an assistance device (a sprinkler) to help one of the teams win.

“The tri-color mode was a little unfair in my opinion,” junior Simon Tran said.

Tran is a dedicated Splatoon player who participated in the Splatoon 3’s demo release. Tran believes that attacking teams have too much of an advantage because the sprinkler, which is a strong assist, is not in the center of the map, rather further from the defending team. He believes this is unjust especially since the winnings of the “half-time game” is extremely beneficial to the final scores and if the two attacking pairs win then those two teams win.

Despite the cons, fans are hyped to have the new content and participate in an active community again.

“The single player has a lot of inspiration from the octo expansion and so far has been pretty good. The multiplayer aspect is amazing as usual; I’ve mostly been on Anarchy Battles,” junior Yannai Barr said. “I think the game itself is better than Splatoon 2 in almost every way to begin with.”