It's less Halo meets Portal and more Halo 2 Multiplayer meets Quake III Arena. And it's awesome.

Splitgate is a free to play arena shooter with a, sort-of, new wrinkle; portals. It's got all the standard arena shooter trimmings. Varied maps and guns, low time-to-kill, and low respawn timers. The new addition are portals. Much like the game portal, players can set up an entry and exit portal on designated areas around the map. Anyone can go through these though only the player who set them gets to have a line of sight through them. You can also shoot through them, though again only the player who set them gets to actually see what's through them. You can set up and disassemble the portals at any time with no cooldown.

The portals are very cool. But they're more gimmick than star of the show. Which I think is a very good thing. Some maps and game modes make the portals far more important than in other maps or game modes. For instance in the oddball game mode, where the objective is to take possession of a ball and keep it longer than the other team, portals are essential. In your average team deathmatch the utility of portals varies widely. Generally, you don't wanna throw portals willy-nilly as they can signal to opponents your intentions. In more strategic game modes like showdown or takedown the mind games you can play by placing portals you don't intend to use are just as important as actually making good usage of portals for travel. In other game modes like team deathmatch or team shotty snipes, you won't find portals as useful.

And this is fine with me. Games dependent hugely on one individual gimmick are risky and rarely successful. Rocket League is of course successful in large part because of rocket powered flying cars, but has longevity because the responsive physics and soccer basics provide something rewarding and skillful to play. Fortnite is of course successful because of its building element but has staying power because the resource collection, gun play, storm and map elements essential to every single battle royale are also satisfying and well developed. Splitgate is no different.

Setting the portals aside and Splitgate has very fun and satisfying gun play. It feels a lot like a Bungie developed shooter. Not as whimsical as the futuristic weaponry of Halo or Destiny, but they feel satisfying to shoot and aim. The guns come in a more standard Quake/Doom set of weapons like any arena shooter. And like Quake they spawn at certain points around the map and can only be picked up on a spawn timer. Every death you start back with a simple AR and Carbine to swap between. Like Quake, the arenas encourage fast combat with low TTK and low respawn timers, meaning you're always in the action. Most maps are varied enough that you'll find yourself engaging in a healthy mixture of longer range, medium range and melee engagements. Giving users a varied experience and forcing them to use all of the available toolbox. Of course some maps favor or force some types of engagements more often than others, but you'll still be encountering all types of fights on any corner of the map.

The game's usage of a minimap that let's you 'see' enemies when they make noise near you in addition to sharing vision with allies means you'll often know exactly where to go to start a firefight. As will your enemies. This is another way Splitgate encourages constant action. Which is fantastic. It also helps balance the skill level a tad meaning that even objectively bad players are likely to get enough kills to have some fun in any given round. Which is important for a game that relies on a high playerbase with no skill-based matchmaking. I'm also a big fan of the server browser which is optional.

Another staple of the arena shooter genre is the bevvy of game modes. And Splitgate provides plenty. There are double digit game modes as well as specialty game modes available at any moment on a time-limited basis like 'One in the Chamber' or 'Instagib.' All of the game modes seemed to pop regularly whether I was queueing for all of them or only trying to play one specifically. Which is nice. The Splitgate playerbase is huge right now such that there's an hour long (or more) queue just to get into the main menu. Time will tell if it maintains popularity enough to feed all of these different queues but the early returns are promising.

Cosmetics are pretty cool and relatively standard fare. Different skins and variants of those skins, different gun skins, different effects for your rocket jumps or oddball skins. All types of things that would make you content to grind for (or in some cases perhaps even pay for). None of which ever seem to intrude on the actual gameplay. It's a good thing. The game should have a steady and unobtrusive revenue stream as a result. And thankfully they don't have any of that prestige bullshit like Call of Duty that is locked behind paywalls or hundreds of gameplay hours. Nor does it have any sort of paid enhancements for guns or ammo. Just like firing up Quake III Arena back in 2000, the entire core game is available to you at first launch.

Much like Quake III Arena the game is more barebones than you realize but plenty deep and enjoyable. There's just not a lot of scruff. There aren't really any useless weapons or consumables or lore filled maps. They are maps built to be conducive to fast placed shooter gameplay with rocket jumps and a jetpack and only the essentials needed to no scope headshot an enemy at 500 yards while strafing through the air into a portal. And it's fun. Every time. No matter how samey or identical two maps or modes or gameplay sessions can be it is fun every time. It's easy to see why the servers are so congested because it's easy to pour ten hours into a Splitgate session than you realize. The automatic requeuing and large number of gamemodes makes it easy to rejoin. And the action is so quick that you hardly put the controller down.

Ultimately the only reason this review isn't a full five stars is because it's still in beta and there's some obvious drawbacks. The 60-90 minute queue just to get into the game is clearly not sustainable nor acceptable long term. While I'm 100% confident they'll figure it out, it's an undeniable detriment at this moment. Similarly, the game is prone to a few lag spikes here or there which is infinitely aggravating in a fast twitch arena shooter. There are some other quirks to navigate as well. I think the fact that there are orange and yellow skins/color variations in the game is just a flat out flaw. All of your enemies glow bright read and your teammates glow blue. But when you see a teammate sprint by in an orange skin it isn't immediately clear that it's a friendly. And this is a game where you can be killed in one or two shots so that sort of confusion even if only for a second can be troublesome.

Time will tell what their battlepass model ends up looking like as well. The battlepass will be important for skinner boxing along many players which will prolong the life and development of Splitgate. So seeing more about how they'll go about that over the years will be important.

Splitgate is a lot of fun. It feels old school. It doesn't even feel like a real re-invention. It just feels like Quake III Arena with some Halo gunplay inspiration plopped into arena shooter maps that aren't too different from maps that existed twenty years ago. And it's damn fun. And I'm very happy people are playing it. I hope it has a nice long life and active playerbase because it is easily already one of my favorite multiplayer shooters. Splitgate has basically removed any desire I may have had to play a CoD or Halo multiplayer game ever again. It's really a fantastic little arena shooter and I'd encourage anyone who likes shooters to give it a shot.