I fell in love with the original Splitgate during a time I was yearning for a compelling FPS experience. Eventually, I grew bored of it and stopped playing, but Splitgate 2 was immediately on my radar. A sequel boasting technical improvements over the original game with the addition of highly-requested features and a mysterious new mode? Count me in. After spending time with it, Splitgate 2 is a good but not great shooter. One with a rock solid foundation, but can’t help but repeat the same mistakes as the franchises it tries to supplant.
Jumping around
Like the first game, Splitgate 2 is an arena shooter in which players can use portals to navigate the map and get a positional advantage on enemies. Portals are what set Splitgate apart from every other game in the genre, and they remain my favorite aspect of playing it. It’s deeply satisfying to pop out behind an unsuspecting enemy and kill them, or to manipulate momentum and gravity to come flying out of a portal and quickly cover large distances.
Portals make you rethink strategy at every turn. It changes how you play objectives, how you position yourself, and how you combat enemy tactics. You’ll notice that experienced players use them more sparingly, sending out a portal to delete an enemy’s, or using them to chuck grenades before quickly closing them back up. The simplest way to pitch Splitgate is that it’s Halo meets Portal, and while I wouldn’t say Splitgate 2 is anywhere near as revolutionary as what Bungie and Valve accomplished, it does a damn good job at standing on those games’ shoulders.
One of the most significant changes in Splitgate 2 is the addition of loadouts. Now, players can create different weapon and gear loadouts for the three factions and decide their attachments, perks, and equipment. They’ll begin with limited options, but will unlock new ones through leveling up their weapons and factions.
There’s an argument to be made that Splitgate 1’s lack of loadouts created an even playing field and allowed players to focus on moment-to-moment gameplay rather than catering to competitive metas. That may be true, but I feel like the addition of loadouts solved one of my biggest problems with the original Splitgate: there was no sense of progression. In Splitgate 2, I feel incentivized to play as every faction and at least try all of their guns, leveling them up to earn new attachments and perks that I can experiment with.
It’s also worth noting that there is no ranked queue in Splitgate 2 at the time of this writing. This feels like a miss to me, as a queue dedicated to compeititive play is always my preferred way to play and FPS once I’m comfortable with its systems. Especially considering that this game will see a lot of players returning from Splitgate 1, I’m sure plenty of us were ready to jump in and start grinding from the get go. 1047 is working on adding ranked, but there’s no word on when that’ll arrive.
Last FPS game standing
In the lead up to Splitgate 2’s release, developer 1047 Games heavily hinted at the addition of a big new feature. A mode that would separate Splitgate 2 from its predecessor and give fans something to chew on. That turned out to be a battle royale mode. I’m not as fatigued on battle royale games as a lot of FPS fans seem to be, so I was willing to give Splitgate 2’s new mode a fair shake. Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed.
Splitgate 2’s battle royale mode takes most of its cues from Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone. That’s in the way you loot chests, take gear from other players, upgrade armor, and equip protective plates. The map is broken into different biomes and sees 15 teams of 4 move inward as a damaging circle closes around the map. As the circle shrinks, these zones eventually close, creating a sense of urgency and forcing players to rotate.
Taking an arena shooter and expanding it out into a battle royale format comes with growing pains. For one, the pacing of matches feels terrible. In many cases, you and your party end up wandering aimlessly, waiting for an enemy to show up as you sit around with strong gear and power weapons. I don’t know if it’s a symptom of the player count or map size, but I often found myself experiencing luls between fights without anything compelling to fill the time. Splitgate 2 is at its best when things are moving at breakneck speed, and battle royale doesn’t deliver that until the final moments, assuming enemy teams don’t get confused and die by the circle before reaching the final zone.
While Splitgate 2 runs pretty well on my PC, battle royale was the only place I ran into issues. I consistently noticed dropped frames when moving between zones as the game loaded the new area.
Battle royale also makes some changes to the game’s core systems. Portal uses are limited in this mode and recharge after time. While this was initially frustrating, I thought that it actually added a unique challenge to the game and punished players for trying to spam portals in the heat of a battle. Being able to teleport across large distances using the portals was also a highlight during my time with battle royale mode.
For a mode that was considerably hyped up before its reveal, Splitgate 2’s battle royale mode feels like an afterthought. Like something that was tacked on after most of the game’s features and systems had already been created, rather than an experience that was specifically tailored for an experience. If you’re looking for a change of pace, you might enjoy running a couple of matches before going back to standard modes, but nothing about it captivated me like so many other games that have defined the battle royale genre over the past decade.
Portals as a service
Splitgate 2 players are tasked with completing daily and weekly challenges to progress through the Battle Pass, which is broken up into three chapters that unlock throughout the duration of a season. As is expected with live service games, the Battle Pass has free and premium rewards that are all cosmetic. This includes weapon skins, portal effects, character skins, emotes, and more. Your mileage will vary depending on how much you care about this stuff, but I appreciate that it all feels secondary and harmless. There is also an in-game Store where you can purchase cosmetics that aren’t found in the Battle Pass.
While I wish that Splitgate 2 was a stronger, more confident evolution of the awesome concept presented in the first game, I can’t deny that I had some good fun just hopping in and shooting around for a few matches every night. Battle royale ultimately feels derivitave, but the modes I actually enjoed were able to scratch that FPS itch. I wish it was the kind of shooter that I could get completely lost in, but it’s not that. Still, it’s among the more interesting options in an arena shooter genre that’s pretty barren right now.
This review is based on the Steam version of Splitgate 2.