There are a hundred different things I could say about why I love Splatoon, but the most potent reason is that Nintendo brought joy, whimsy, and color to a genre so overwhelmingly saturated by darkness and death.
Sure, not every single shooter in the history of gaming has been gritty and serious (that line of thinking of "Splatoon wasn't the first shooter to accomplish [X]!" seemed to come out loud and proud in another recent thread on the game), but in my two decades of playing vidja gaems it is the first I've ever seen that marries such heartwarming creativity with insane levels of production values and gameplay mechanic brilliance.
This is easily my favorite video game in at least five years, and has earned a firm spot in my top 10 games of all time list.
And the best part? The first iteration was so successful that we'll likely have DECADES of new Splatoon games to come!
<3