The 2021 relaunch of Splitgate solidified that Valve-style portals and old-school arena shooters are two great tastes that taste great together. Splitgate 2 carries that same great melding of run-and-gun action and tactical trickery that helped the original plant its flag in the genre, so it’s starting from a good place. However, even though the addition of character classes and a wider range of weapons help bring Splitgate 2 through a new threshold of promise, some of the other shots it takes through the looking glass come back to bite it and have made me a bit less optimistic about the time I’ve spent with this free-to-play followup so far.
Visually, quite a bit has changed relative to the original. Gone is the muted, more industrial look of the battle venues, replaced by lots of vibrant colors and brighter lighting, making it look less distinctive and more like the many games trying to catch the eye of Fortnite players. In the trade up from the grubby metal walls to the cleaner, sleeker surfaces, Splitgate 2 is also absent of the more interesting features that made the original’s maps interesting and memorable. Features like deserts and trees that would be smack-dab in the middle of a map (like in one of my favorites, Oasis) are now relegated to background decorations, and every surface you’ll actually run and gun across feels samey across the 15 map options.
The returning map creator mode, now called The Lab, is powerful enough that it’s already filled with dozens and dozens of fan-made recreations of famous PvP maps from bigger games, alongside some more interesting and original user creations that serve as great side shows to the main action. But they are often too gimmicky to be considered good replacements for the developer-made maps as far as having consistent and competitive rounds of the standard modes (to the extent that’s possible considering there’s no ranked mode currently available). I had a pretty hard time getting strangers to queue for some of the wackier-looking options, often sitting in lobbies alone for long periods of time in hopes some other curious Splitgaters would stumble in. I was often disappointed.
Splitgate 2’s biggest win, though, is in gameplay tweaks that have a huge impact on pacing from match to match. The signature portals are still the X-factor, allowing you to create paths between two points on the map on the fly. They are the perfect tools for setting up ambushes, tricky getaways, and even manipulating physics to slingshot you across the map. I mostly use them here like I did in 2021, pulling off one-man flanks on jerks attempting to take my team’s objectives. This time, though, it only takes one button to create both ends of your personal wormhole when shot in succession, making them much more convenient to use. It comes at a slight cost, in that opening one of your portals on top of an enemy’s is the only way to close theirs, and that can force you to close off your own routes. But after logging 10 hours this week, I much prefer this minor drawback over the anti-portal grenades of yesteryear.
Movement always felt smooth, quick, and controlled in Splitgate thanks to its fast (but not too fast) sprinting and the limited jetpacks. In Splitgate 2, both of these things combine with a new slide mechanic to make getting around the maps feel like I remember my best rounds of Titanfall. The jetpack seems more powerful, with more lift before cooldown than the original’s version. Being able to stay aloft for longer means firefights more often begin or end in the air, adding a level of dynamism that makes every skirmish a challenge at every angle.
The arsenal isn’t much different than the original, though, which is a shame because it’s not very imaginative. Most weapons have slick futuristic curves and color schemes but function exactly like the assault rifles, SMGs, and carbines you’ve wielded in other games, and I wasn’t motivated to do much exploration of the options or customization of loadout presets because of it. They really just make me want to sprint to grab power weapons, which spawn with some fanfare on neutral points during matches, as soon as possible. These returning super guns have gotten a couple of notable additions to their lineup, including my favorite: a pair of machine pistols that can be combined to form a longer machine gun when aiming down the sights. These are all awesome, game-changing weapons that are worth the effort to secure every time they’re available.
Mechanically, the biggest change to the way Splitgate 2 plays is the addition of three character classes, avatars of competing corporate entities who settle their differences in this futuristic sport of gun-toting portal slipping. Sabrask, Meridian, and Aeros all have their own unique active abilities, like Sabrask’s Smart Wall, which plops a one-way bullet shield that protects anyone standing behind it while being free to shoot through it at the enemy (much like non-portable version of Reinhardt’s shield in Overwatch). They each also have passive effects that they can grant their whole team simply by being present, incentivizing teams to have at least one of each in play. That means actives are more obviously impactful than the passives, largely because I’ve yet to play a game where every team involved wasn’t receiving boosted health regen from Meridian and faster ability and equipment recharges from Aeros and Sabrask, respectively. Is it really a “boost” if it’s basically the standard?
I think there’s an argument to be made that the choice to forgo class-based, hero shooter-y design was a keystone of the monument to the past’s simpler shooters that the original Splitgate was building. It meant every player started from the same base capabilities and had to earn every advantage during a match. I am sympathetic to this old-school Halo-style mentality, but I’ve come to prefer the diversity of these three new classes, which add just enough tactical expression to give old people like me a chance against fast-twitch no-scoping youth so long as I can out-think them.
Matches, regardless of which of the suite of returning modes you’re playing, are almost always more fun on smaller maps, which may not be as interesting as they were in Splitgate but at least are built to take the most advantage of portaling in a way that ensures you’re never too far from the action. Larger maps, like the ones found in the new three team, 24-player Onslaught game types that supersize Team Deathmatch and Hotzone, can feel almost lonely because you have to run a fair distance to find some other players exchanging fire before plotting your portal game. It’s a bummer then that all of these new modes rely on increasingly isolatingly large play spaces.
Across the board, it strikes me as odd that maps seem to deemphasize the advantage that using portals would have – so many objectives sit in places completely hidden from a portal wall, and it felt much more difficult to use portals for aggressive pushes. Fortunately for me, someone who mostly uses portals to set traps and for escapes, and I felt like Splitgate 2’s layouts firmly establish that my more passive approach is the right way to play. Firstly, thank you so much 1047 Games, but secondly, this means that offensive strikes on objectives, especially the ones you have to hunker down on like in Firecracker or Domination, happen with the kinds of jetpack assaults and high-energy flanks that you could do anywhere else. Even modes that require lots of movement or rotating objectives, like Splitball and Hotzone, don’t afford many more opportunities to use the feature in a way that couldn’t be done without it. The most damning realization of this came when I was playing one of the No Portals limited-time playlist maps and realizing my games didn’t feel all that different without them.
Finally, the big new marquee feature of Splitgate 2 is the battle royale mode, which at the time of this writing, I haven’t spent too much time with (hence why this review is still in progress). But from what I have played, it operates mostly as expected: many teams of four drop into a semi-random zone on the map and fight each other to be the last squad standing. The wrinkle it adds to the genre (besides portals) is that the greater map is made up of four smaller maps connected to one another by jump paths and tunnels. Splitgate 2’s version of the storm closing in around you is shutting down one of these regions, forcing all surviving squads toward each other in a shrinking set of rooms. These maps are styled as different environments – there’s a snowy zone and a lava zone, for instance – so it’s easy to communicate which one you’re talking about when planning with your team. I haven’t noticed if these zones have too many differences from one another outside of how they look, though. Does the lava burn you? Does the ice make you slide uncontrollably? I’ll report back when I wrap up this review next week.
