There’s a crossplay closed alpha test for Halo-meets-Portal free-to-play shooter Splitgate 2, which will run from February 27th to March 2nd on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. We had a chance to play the game a couple weeks earlier, alongside other members of the press, content creators and the very developers themselves. It was quite a blast, so let me dive into why Splitgate 2 is one to watch out for!
Splitgate? Is it still alive?
The question in the header above may be a lot of readers’ first thought when first seeing this article’s headline. After all, it makes sense. At the time, a rather inexperienced developer team, 1047 Games, soft-launched their free-to-play shooter Splitgate in 2019 on PC, then gave it a proper multiplatform relaunch in 2021. It was, by all means, a tremendous success. The team was overwhelmed by the interest to their elevator pitch of “what if Halo met Valve’s Portal?”, to the point that massive login queues and server issues arose, as millions of people were suddenly trying to play the multiplayer phenomenon of the hour. As stated in my very own review back then, Splitgate suffered a little lack of identity, mimicking Halo’s design a bit too closely at time, but it was a bloody brilliant shooter that I kept going back to for a good while. The transformation of classic arena shooters with the inclusion of these portals was a novel concept, and the game was just exhilarating to play.
As is often the case, however, these multiplayer titles’ popularity only lasts so long. With the spotlight no longer on Splitgate, and with such a small team unable to compete with the content rollout and marketing of behemoths like Fortnite, Call of Duty and so forth, most people eventually moved back to their game-as-a-service of choice, leaving Splitgate in the dust. From my experience, I didn’t see people leaving in droves due to some massive design flaws or issues. Players have simply seen and done everything the game had to offer, and with content rollout not being too fast, interest faded a bit. Behind the curtains, 1047 Games were gearing up. A team that used to be of less than 10 people, most of which never shipped a game in their lives, are now nearing 200 souls, including various experienced members. The difficult decision was made to sort of abandon Splitgate, instead of rendering it a perpetual game-as-a-service, and launch a sequel with a much stronger infrastructure to begin with. That is Splitgate 2, and that is what we played recently in an alpha version – soon, you’ll be able to do so as well.
Now you’re thinking with portals… again
So, what is the Splitgate formula anyway? At its core, it’s the Halo style of exciting, yet intentionally somewhat “floaty”, low-ish gravity first person arena shooting action, except the player can spawn portals on a whim. This was done in a typically very Portal style, Valve’s timeless first person puzzle classic, with the player being able to place two different portals on certain flat surfaces as they please. These then become interconnected teleporting devices that you can even see through, allowing the player to create a new line of sight, or even a traversal option that straight up did not exist a second earlier. With momentum carried over, the player’s speed and direction will be preserved when leaving the other side, so players could for example place a portal on the ground, jump in from a large height, then use the accumulated speed to throw themselves into the face of an enemy, only to shotgun them in style. Yep, that’s Splitgate, and this sequel even made the formula that much easier and accessible, making the portal creation bound to a single button instead of 2. The old way of doing it is still available though, so don’t worry.
Just reproposing that would not quite be enough for a numbered sequel; fortunately, Splitgate 2 has a lot more up its sleeves. The biggest change is a purely technical one, and is the move to Unreal Engine 5. This astronomically powerful engine has been both a blessing and a curse for developers in recent years. Its popularity means it’s easy to find help, new hires, there’s plenty of new features added regularly and, of course, the engine is mighty powerful and can create sensational landscapes. On the flipside, we’ve seen multiple UE5-powered games struggle to keep up with current hardware lately, both on consoles and PC. After a couple hours of playing, it seems like Splitgate 2 only picked from the pro column, nothing from the cons. The game isn’t ludicrously detailed in terms of character models and textures, but it’s smooth and clean, on top of already featuring a surprisingly great optimization. We could only test the PC version thus far, but with very low system requirements and an already polished technical background, the game ran more than fine maxed out on my gaming laptop – even though it only packs a GeForce RTX 3050 with only 4GB of VRAM. It struggled a bit more when we had 24 players in a tighter space, but launch is a while away still.
Did you just say 24 players?
That magic number, 24, is one of the key upgrades to the Splitgate 2 package, because the first game only supported up to 12 players per match, with the map design also being built around the close-quarter action for the most part. Splitgate 2 delivers more of that, with several excellent-looking and brilliantly flowing 4v4/6v6 maps, but also cranking up the intensity with 24 player matches. Enter Multi-Team Portal Warfare (what a mouthful) with 3 gangs of 8 having to duke it out for supremacy on bigger maps – arenas as big as what you’d expect from the vehicle-based levels in Halo, for reference. No vehicles on the menu for Splitgate, who knows what the future will bring though. The existence of portals still make these maps as frantic and exciting as they should be, though the map we kept playing (Glacier) seemingly intentionally lowered the amount of portal surfaces to use. This helps with the feeling of us really playing on a big map, as opposed to just spamming portals to automatically jump into a few key locations.
All this, of course, happens in a wide variety of game modes, of which there’s even more in this sequel. The variations of classic modes like team deathmatch and domination, all the way down to Hotzone, and even brand new modes like Firecracker and Splitball. Firecracker is, essentially, search and destroy on steroids, while Splitball is all about holding on to the ball as long as possible to score. Almost every single game mode has been rebalanced however, favouring a shorter, round-based approach, instead of a single marathon. Most matches, in fact, see the teams face short, 2-3 minute rounds, with the ultimate victor defined by who’s won the more rounds. I personally really like this approach, as it gives teams better chances of catching up after a tough start. The ultimate goal, seemingly, is to have a huge roster of modes, as is the case in games like Halo and Call of Duty, giving every kind of player something to enjoy.
Coming of age
The actual gameplay variety has also increased, because there’s 3 factions to choose from now, each with its own variations on the weapon archetypes. These are Aeros, Meridian and Sabrask, and all 3 propose slightly altered versions of shotguns, sniper rifles, SMGs, assault rifles and more. On top of the higher visual variety given by different character types, the weapons themselves offering more versions is an interesting twist, and the players can even have multiple loadouts per character. Some grenades and perks also exist, and power weapons also pop up across the maps. This alpha already offers 4 such weapons, including the unmissable rocket launcher. If you ever played Splitgate, Halo, or even an old school arena shooter like Unreal Tournament or Quake, you know the deal – everyone will want these weapons, so try and be the first to get to them. In the 24-player modes, even airdrops pop up from time to time, also delivering high-end power weapons that can make or break a match.
Needless to say, Splitgate 2 is an absolute blast to play. The movement, the aiming, the graphics, the general presentation – everything feels like a big budget, well-polished, high profile shooter. Gone is the “rudimental” presentation of the first game, with a much more clean visuals. The step up to Unreal Engine 5 makes the game feel more slick and precise, with it even using the experimental Iris – a brand new replication engine that not even Epic’s very own Fortnite uses yet. Due to the novelty of this tech, there’s no support for certain things such as replays. The advantage, however, is a mighty strong netcode, with low pings and excellent hit registration even in this limited test session we had, with players all across the continents. The developers abundantly acknowledged the first game’s shortcomings, how to better focus on player retention, faster content rollout and so forth – so expect better long-term support for Splitgate 2.
The time is now
What we played is just the alpha, but I’ll not mince my words – Splitgate 2 is already an absolute blast. A much more robust infrastructure, a better presentation, a refined gameplay and tons of new content – this is how a numbered sequel should be, and it feels like 1047 Games has an absolute banger in their hands. As a reminder, this alpha runs from 12pm ET of Thursday, 27th of February, all the way down to 12pm of Monday, 3rd of March, on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC, featuring full crossplay. The full launch of the game will come sometime later this year, and will also be available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. I’ll certainly be fragging a lot this upcoming weekend. Will you? Let us know!
