Splitgate: Arena Warfare – PAX East Preview
Splitgate: Arena Warfare has gone through a lot of changes since the game was initially revealed. With potentially only a few weeks left before the game is finally available it seems as though most of those changes were for the best. Try as you might not to make comparisons to other games, there are times you just can’t avoid it. All the marketing for Splitgate literally screams Halo meets Portal – and they aren’t wrong. In fact, this may be the best “Halo” game released in years – and it wasn’t developed by 343 or Bungie.
During our demo we had the chance to play the game with the traditional mouse and keyboard as well as an Xbox One controller. Though currently only announced for Steam, the developers are going to be deciding soon whether the game is coming to Xbox One, PS4 or both. A game like this would be right at home on Microsoft’s console and for Sony’s faithful, this could be the closest they come to having a Halo game on their console of choice.
Gameplay falls in line with most modern online multiplayer FPS’s, but there is one thing here that sets it apart – portal jumping. That’s right, portal jumping. This could change the genre in ways we haven’t seen in quite some time. You’ll have to relearn everything that you thought you knew about First Person shooters. Throughout each map are certain walls, floors and ceilings that are marked for you letting you know that you can place a portal there. By placing an entrance portal on one and an exit on any other you’ll enter the first and come out the other side. This will change matches on the fly in ways you won’t believe until you play it yourself.
At one point there was someone shooting at us from behind a wall, briefly before disappearing behind it. Thinking we would catch them on the other side as they doubled back to avoid a fire fight, we were surprised to find nothing but a portal there when we finally arrived at their position to flank them. You’ll be able to see the other players portal, but you won’t be able to jump through it in order to attack them from behind.
Using the controller made it a little easier to get used to opening portals than the mouse and keyboard but, once you master it, you’ll have a hard time wondering why someone hasn’t added this feature into a game sooner.
We only had the chance to try two of the many maps available, but they were both unique and different enough that we can’t wait to see the rest of the maps come launch.
Splitgate: Arena Warfare is expecting to go to Beta soon with and expected Spring 2019 release on PC with console information still being kept under wraps.
