Splitgate 2 Excels At Feeling Like Its Own Thing | GameSpot Hands-On Preview

New additions like character classes and abilities help further distinguish Splitgate 2 from a field of extremely familiar shooters.

It's still a Halo-style arena shooter with portals, but what has surprised me most about Splitgate 2 is how much more there is to go with that idea. With its new iteration of the game, developer 1047 Games has dialed in elements that help build its identity, complementing what was already there with some new additions that help Splitgate 2 feel different from other shooters on the market.

Ahead of its closed alpha, I played Splitgate 2 for about four hours. As mentioned, the underlying idea is the same: Splitgate is a free-to-play competitive multiplayer first-person shooter where the arena is covered in special walls, and on those walls, you can place portals. Shoot a portal at one wall and another at a second wall and you create a gateway that lets you enter one and exit the other, instantly traveling across the map. You can also see and shoot through portals, throw grenades through portals, and chase people through their portals, creating a lot of fun chaos.

What I liked best about Splitgate 2 was how much of an identity it brings to the competitive shooter space. It harkens back to a very specific era in shooter history and is obviously greatly influenced by games like Halo, Unreal Tournament, and Tribes, but it also feels very different from everything else in the shooter field right now. It's a fast, intense shooter with a lot of great design ideas working in concert, and at least across four hours, it felt like a worthy successor to and an advancement over the original game.

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