Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting where someone stood up, took a deep breath, and pitched a first-person shooter with portals.
How would you go about convincing someone that the one thing missing from the recent crop of first-person shooters is the star of GLADoS’ malevolent funhouse, the portal gun? Me, I don’t think I’d even try – and I’m not sure anyone could have convinced me, either. Well. Until I actually sat down and played Splitgate, that is.
Splitgate reviewPublisher: 1047 GamesDeveloper: 1047 GamesPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: In Beta/Early Access now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
For what it’s worth, there’s a part of me that instinctively (read: stupidly) pushes back against fads and “viral” games. Despite developing the gaming tastes of a 12-year-old in my latter years (all I want to do these days is shoot stuff and watch things explode), Splitgate’s marriage of FPS and portals seemed gimmicky – maybe even a touch gauche. After several merry hours with it, however, I can confidently confirm that the hyperbole is not hyperbole at all: Splitgate is astonishingly good fun.
I’ve racked up of hours in Halo. I like to think it’s a franchise I know inside out. That’s why, the I dropped into Splitgate, it felt like home. Forget perks and skills and special abilities; Splitgate is first and foremost an intensely satisfying shooter, where your success comes down not to the weapon you spent the last three months grinding the sublime God Roll for, but just the raw abilities of you and your opponents. And it’s glorious.