Out of all of the multiplayer shooters that come and gone throughout all of 2021 Splitgate was the only game for me that stood out, because it broke up from the monopoly of Live Service, Hero Shooters and Battle Royale type games that spread all over and Splitgate was a Halo inspired shooter that was a throwback to classic multiplayer FPS games while offering its own spin on the genre. It originally started life back in 2019 on Steam as an Early Access title before eventually rebuilding it from the ground up to release on not only on Steam but also get a release on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles in 2021 in Beta form. It wasn't until finally when it got to Season 2 in September 2022 after its rough amount of days of backend errors, game crashes and technical problems that Splitgate finally got out of Beta and got a full release and throughout all of the development cycle it went through it was a full on Free-to-Play game that didn't relay on any egregious business practices and forced microtransactions to make Splitgate stand out. It had a great healthy amount of players when it first came out and was supported very well from both the community and the developers and after about four seasons including its time in the Beta the developers have sadly ended updates for the game but allowed the servers for the game to continue so that people can come online anytime and still enjoy playing it for the foreseeable future while the dev team work on the sequel Splitgate 2.
So, I already have reviewed Splitgate a long time ago on my Gamespot channel and also when I talked about the disaster that Season 2, but even after reviewing that game it has ever since grown on me and I went on to not only unlock all of the trophies on the PlayStation 4 version but also the Gold Skins for all of the Weapons and eventually 95% of the Badges. Since I returned to playing Splitgate after looking up gameplay of the anticipated sequel I figured that I should do yet another review of this game and see if it is still as great as I remember it in 2024 as well as covering some of the changes that were made to it over the years.
The gameplay of Splitgate is that it was a throwback to shooters of old with simple classic game types to play and yet it has a game mechanic that makes it stand out. You have a Portal Gun where you can shoot out a Blue Portal at points on the map that you can use it on and also shoot out a Green Portal at another spot on the map and then you can then pass through the Portal to reach the other side of the map. Using Portals is the key to not only getting around the map in a quick and easy fashion as it allows you to get to higher areas that would be impossible by regularly jumping or walking. It also can be used as a quick way to escape from enemies pursuing you and lastly to get around them and get the surprise drop on them. Using Portals effectively becomes a key component of Splitgate as you can gain an advantage against other players when you can see through them and can use them to setup attacks that others won't see coming and in some situations you can even setup Portals to prevent enemies getting to you.
You do have EMP Grenades that can be used to shut down enemy Portals to stop them from shooting from them and gaining the advantage over you. EMP Grenades do NOT inflict any damage to other players and are used to get rid of enemy portals so the gameplay in Splitgate doesn't relay on constant grenade spamming it becomes more about the gunplay and how you make use of the Portals.
You have over 11 different weapons to use in the game from the Assault Rifle and also the Carbine which are your starting weapons for most matches, the Assault Rifle fills the role of any Assault Rifle from any other modern FPS game as it deals good amount of damage and the recoil from it can be controlled from full auto if you hold the aiming down. The Carbine is great for damage and can really be good for zooming and getting some high damage shots on your enemies. Other weapons include a Rapid Fire Pistol which does very weak damage and is just absolutely worthless to use, a three round burst Battle Rifle which is pretty fun, an SMG which is a great spray and pray weapon, the Plasma Rifle which shoot slow but powerful energy shots which makes it effective if you time your aim at where your enemy is going to be and don't let the gun overheat, a Sniper Rifle that is great for getting of some perfect headshots, a Shotgun that is so overpowered that it can send any poor unsuspecting victim instantly to the shadow realm with a single shot even from mid range, a BFB which is a melee weapon that is the equivalent of Halo's Gravity Hammer where it instantly kills anyone that gets close to you but the amount of uses is rather small and runs out of juice quickly, then you also have the Railgun that charges up and fires a powerful laser blast at your enemy and kills him in one hit and lastly you have a Rocket Launcher that deals explosive damage to anyone close by and gets caught in the blast. What is great about the weapons in Splitgate is that there are no variations of each weapon, you get basically one Assault Rifle and it handles like an Assault Rifle should, you got one Shotgun, one Carbine and it is the same deal with all other weapons that you can get your hand on. Every weapon in the game serves a purpose really well and you can easily find a favourite to use in any given situation, while a couple of the more powerful weapons don't have much ammo for them and also take a while for them to respawn still the gunplay is tight and kept at a balanced level so that the more overpowered weapons don't carry you through the whole match. Easily my favourite weapons to use in the game are the Assault Rifle, Plasma Rifle, the BFB, the Shotgun and lastly the Railgun. The game's weapons also has a really good time to kill that is not too quick and isn't too slow either and is just about right that you can react to who is hitting you and get out of the way. Splitgate has the right amount of gunplay to offer for a shooter and you can make use of the Portals to gain an advantage and surprise your enemies that would not see you coming and it is satisfying to make use of the Portals and get either a Railgun or Rocket Launcher and get a shot on your enemies before they even noticed your presence. What is cool also is that some other players online can really put the Portal System to the fullest and do some really cool tricks that you wouldn't expect any normal player would try and do like being able to jump from the top of the portal cube and then you end up flying quick from above onto a safe side of the map and you can keep up the Portal momentum by portaling quick as you are flying with some practice.
You also do get different Killing Spree announcement lines from when you are making multiple kills in a row from Double Kill, Triple Kill and so forth as well as getting more kills without dying from Killing Spree to Killection Agency also which can show off how well you are doing in a match as you get medals during the course of the match. You can even get a medal for getting a kill through a Portal which is something you can do to surprise enemies when they are distracted and you can even Portal an enemy out of bounds by setting up a track that involves putting up Portals that will send your enemy out of the arena which will earn you a Portal Kill which is tough but satisfying thing to pull off.
As for the game modes there are plenty of different game modes that you can play that are split into different playlists. You have your standard Team Deathmatch which is simple kill all enemies to earn max amount of points to win the match to more objective based matches like Team Objective which have classic team based objective modes like King of the Hill, One-Flag Capture the Flag which alternates teams into defence and offence phases and also Splitball which has teams trying to take the ball for their team and have to hold onto it for enough time to capture it and score. The scoring system for Splitball is changed as the ball resets after a point has been scored now which prevents players from flying around too much and making it difficult for enemies to try and steal it. Other game modes and playlists include Team Snipers and Shotty Snipers which has all players with Sniper Rifles and also a Shotgun, Zombie VIP has one player on each team a VIP target that the other players who have only BFB bats while the VIP has only a Shotgun and cannot use Portals, Fiesta has every weapon loadout change upon respawning, Laser Tag has every with low health, run super fast with Plasma Rifles, Gun Game which has the player level up gun ranks by getting kills with each available gun in the game while meleeing an enemy knocks him down a rank, Team SWAT has you with Carbines and Battle Rifles and a single shot to the head is an instant kill with that same rules applying also to Pistol SWAT, and there is also a No Portal playlist which classic variants of Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and King of the Hill just that you don't have Portals to use.
My personal favourite game mode to play in the game is Takedown, Takedown is a round based game mode where the goal is too take out all other enemies without letting one of them respawn back in, it not only involves good team coordination by trying to stick together as well as making good use of the Portals whenever you can. There are also the Featured Playlists that will throw in a game mode that is NOT on the main playlist rotation in Quick Play on a weekly basis which are basically the same game type modes with new rules and spins of the main game modes featured in the game. Contamination was one of the game modes that was in the Quick Play rotation until bizarrely moved to featured playlist and that one had players surviving against zombie players armed with BFB with the latter increasing with each time a zombie player gets a kill.
One of the most unique game modes that needed to be in the Quick Play rotation is Teabag Confirmed which in it players have to perform a Teabag by crouching repetitively on the enemy's body to score, that's right you score by giving the other players the disrespect. What's funny is that the developers made it clear that it was a thing players do to other kinds of noobs online which would either make them get angry at you and make you the priority target so they wanted it in Splitgate, I just wished it was on the Quick Play game mode rotation because it is such a funny game mode where you can be a massive jerk to the other players. 1047 even put a counter in the stats screen that shows the amount of times you Teabagged someone in the matches so you know that the developers knew about the Teabagging.
All of the maps are nicely detailed and are very varied and well layered out and are also great in size. They each many different spots that you can make use your Portals on and there is now a good amount of maps that you can play on with Lavawell being one of my personal favourite all time maps to play. It's nice to see that Splitgate has arenas that have a great amount of layers to them and don't rely on large open areas with loads of inside buildings for the sake of having large open areas that are poorly designed and are annoying in many modern multiplayer FPS games like in Call of Duty and Battlefield. Splitgate's map are simple to learn, has just enough places for you to make use of the game's mechanics without them being too simplistic or too large.
Matches in Splitgate tend to last roughly five or six minutes minimum and up to ten minutes max per match depending on the game mode you are playing. Connecting to matches normally is meant to be quick but however when you connect to a game lobby you are put into a Waiting Room where you can warm up and practice with other players and bots which is a great way to get used to the game mechanics before the actual match loads up and starts. You can add and remove a playlist that you want to play and also can enable or disable Cross-Play anytime so that you can chose to play with people on other platforms or you can limit the servers so that you only play with players on the same platform you are playing the game on. Enabling and/or disabling any of these can affect how long the game can take to find a server that has enough players to play, if there are not enough players in the server then a number of AI controlled bots can enter the match with you. Surprisingly the bot AI is very capable when it comes to combat, they make use of the weapons available on the map, do group up and even back up when they are getting attacked. Sure they don't make good use of portals, have some path finding problems but for the most part they are very capable bots that can hold their own. Then you also have the Ranked Matches which requires Cross-Play to be enabled and the Ranked Matches have more hardcore based variants of the regular game modes just with Radar disabled and starting with the Carbine and Pistol. Completing any of the Ranked Matches will give you a certain number of points depending on your performance and if you won the match or not. Ranked Matches can be fun and entertaining as they provide a much more challenging experience from the regular gameplay modes but connecting to a Ranked Match can often a pain due to sometimes the server will load up a match but doesn't bring up enough players to make the match start resulting in the match being terminated.
In addition to the actual Gameplay there is also the Race Mode where you take any map you want to try to collect all of the Splitballs as quickly as you can. This is a game mode that fully makes you understand the layout of each of the game's maps and fully utilize the portals to quickly make your way around in the fastest time you can make it. It is pretty fun and will have you perfecting your portaling skills.
Performance wise Splitgate runs really well on the Unreal Engine and is well optimized on the consoles especially on the PlayStation 4 which is what I played the game on. The gameplay is always at a 60 FPS despite having plenty of effects going on the screen at once and it is an amazing looking game with fantastic looking character models, brilliantly detailed environments and some great looking effects as well especially when you can see through your own portals. It doesn't have any music during the gameplay but what is heard in the main menu is pretty good, the weapons all sound incredibly impactful and that ding sound when you get a kill is very satisfying to hear, all accompanied by an announcer who is rather humorous when it comes to killing spree names.
But with many things that are very enjoyable about Splitgate there are some annoying flaws holding everything about it back from perfection. Normally you should be able to pick what game type playlists that you want to play even if you just to focus on one single playlist and it should search for a match no problem. Sometimes though the game would not search for a match and or would take either minutes or remain in infinite searching and does nothing and my only solution to getting out of infinite searching was to cancel the current game searching and then restart the search or sometimes restart the game for it to get it to search a match again.
When entering the Waiting Room the gameplay for some reason freezes up for a couple of seconds which leaves your character as a free target for other players in the Waiting Room, plenty of times I would get killed and don't get a chance to spawn back in again. Although this does not happen during the actual matches I find it incredibly annoying to enter into a Waiting Room after telling the game to search a match only for it to freeze up for a few seconds and cause me an unavoidable death because of the freezing.
Another bug I had was with the Map Creator, now for the most the Map Creator is a fantastic feature allowing you to create your own map complete with layers, Portal spots, weapon spawn locations, as well as many pieces of furniture that you can use to decorate your map. You can share your masterpiece with friends and other players in the community and also can download other people's creation to play in Custom Mode either by yourself or with other players. However when I downloaded a couple of maps that the community had made the game would bug out and caused my entire game to boot me to the Tutorial Area when I next booted up the game and made all of the character and weapon skins I got act as if I only just unlocked them by highlighting them as new when I had them unlocked for so long. Everytime I kept the downloaded maps and loaded up the game it would do that every single time and my only solution to prevent the bug from happening again was to delete the downloaded maps which really sucked because I did like some of the fan created maps. Well at least you get to play some of the fan created maps in some of the Quick Play game modes as well as the game modes in the Featured Playlist just an absolute shame that downloading some of the fan created maps but it is messed up that there is a bug in the game that can cause you to replay the Tutorial and mess with your acquired character and weapon skins like that and it was annoying. But at least during the actual gameplay I didn't experience any server lag or disconnections and it remained stable throughout matches so at the very least the online play functions really well.
The other annoying bug I also experienced was one where after a match you can optionally save a clip of the match you just played so that you can review or watch it as many times you like so you can how other players did in a match. However for me whenever I try to save a clip for myself to watch it would never save the clip and always cause an error every single time. Now none of the bugs that I have experienced so far do not outright ruin the game but they can be absolutely infuriating especially when you want to try some of the community created content for yourself without causing the game to bug out. Sure the PS4 console can actually save a gameplay clip of the game you are playing so you can save gameplay content of Splitgate that way but to have a clip cause an error in game and not save properly is just another oversight on the developers part.
It is really, really hard to throw any kind of hate on Splitgate with some of the bugs, glitches and other kinds of issues when the game itself is entirely addictive and it is a Free-to-Play game. The game has a bunch of different skins that you can get and there are different ways of getting new skins to try out. You can unlock some skins as well as drops and also a large amount of experience points by completing a bunch of different challenges from either winning matches, getting kills with the types of weapons as well as more complex challenges like going through your teams' or enemies' Portals, getting kills through portals or even getting a collateral. There are skins that you can optionally get by spending some real life money on the Splitcoins which you use to buy the skins for your character or you can get some through drops that you earn with chances of either getting a common skin, a rare skin, an epic skin or at best a legendary skin. There are many different skins that you can unlock from different weapon skins, character skins, Jetpack skins, Portal Gun skins, as well as emotes, sprays and even profile banners and nametags. Also added in where badges which were achievements that you got from your overall performance from matches and you can apply two of your best badges onto your profile, I have nearly all of them just need to work on the Badges on Ranked Matches. What really makes the skins in Splitgate worth getting and what makes the live service aspect of the game so fair is that you are not forcefully encouraged to spend real money to get the skins you want, you can earn some really good skins from a drop with some luck and the good thing is that drops are easy to come by and you can easily earn some by completing the daily or weekly challenges that change out frequently and are fun to do. You can even earn the Gold Weapon skins from completing all of their challenges and they are worth doing to make your weapons look more Gold.
Splitgate used to update on different seasons and allowed players to optionally purchase the premium Battle Pass which then would give premium skins and a bunch of other stuff. The game is quite easy to level up the battle pass because you do get a ton of experience from winning and doing all of the weekly challenges gives you a ton of experience points which will give you a couple of easy level ups for the battle pass. The game also has a weekly play thing where every day you play Splitgate you get one day in which will give you some experience as well as double experience for a full day, however playing seven days a week will earn you 100 Splitcoins and playing every single day for nine weeks would allow you to get the premium Battle Pass for the rest of the season. If you were a frequent player and played every single day than you didn't even need to spend real money on a premium Battle Pass and saved up enough Splitcoins to get it instead which is a great. Remember you are in charge with how you should spend your money. However now 1047 has since stopped updating Splitgate and has no longer decided to do any more seasons so the Infinite Season is the final season for Splitgate where everything that Season Pass gives you is for free including the best skins it offers and there is no need to spend money on it. It has a really good progression system and the amount of the experience you are going to get based on performance is going to make you get a ton of level ups through the Battle Pass. The game even gives you plenty of different challenges that you can do that will have you keep coming back for more on top of the trophies/achievements to unlock as well.
There is an incredible amount of customization that you can have with the skins that you can unlock for your character and many of them look great to try out, whenever you unlock a new legendary or rare skin especially if you unlock one that has animations you diffidently want to see what they would look like on your character which you can easily do by inspecting your weapon and then try out a new character model skin to show off to other players. One of my main goals now in Splitgate is to get my hands on all of the Forge skins and basically all of the Fiery and flame based skins in the game including the weapons in which I need two more of the Forge Flame weapon skins with hopes that I could get the Molten Raider weapon skins as well as the Ember weapon skins as well.
So do I think Splitgate is still enjoyable in the current year as it was back then? That is a straight up easy answer and I say that it certainly still is. Splitgate is more than just a throwback shooter that is Halo with Portals but it is an all round solid First Person Shooter multiplayer game with solid mechanics, great maps, great gunplay, great number of game mode types to play, a great amount of customization, has fantastic gameplay all around that makes it stand out from other shooters on the market and best of all everything it offers is for free. Splitgate can stand on its own compared to so many other multiplayer shooters that cost full price and is highly recommended for anyone tired of how underwhelming Call of Duty and Battlefield have been recently as well as wanting a break form the Hero Class Based shooters and Battle Royale type games will find a lot of things to like in Splitgate. It did enjoy some popularity when it relaunched in 2021 but mostly from PlayStation gamers because it came close to having Halo style gameplay on a PlayStation console just with Jetpacks and Portals and 1047 executed it all really well.
1047 also did do a great number of updates and patches and supported the game pretty well, there were plenty of new content that got added in throughout such as adding in a new map like the Karman Station while reworking the Foregone Destruction and the Abyss and the reworked versions of the maps look really incredible. They did change the playlist rotation in Quick Play and put a bunch of different gamemodes into different playlists and have to play the game mode and map that gets picked out instead of having seperate game modes that you can choose to play. That means that if you want to play something like Splitball but don't want to play King of the Hill or Domination you are stuck playing the other modes which is only a minor nuisense if you are going for the required challenges, but if you want to play just Team Deathmatch and nothing else you can still play just only Team Deathmatch. They also attempted to balance the game a bit by changing some of the weapons in the maps. For example the Plasma Rifle in the Stadium map is swapped out for a Sniper Rifle, the Rocket Launcher that used to be in the Crag Map has been replaced with a Plasma Rifle and some other maps have had weapon placements changed which only people who played the game when it first launched will notice and may or may not like the changes to weapon placements in the maps. They eventually changed the UI and menu interface and the resigned look of it all is great as well as having to take time to fix up the backend servers and other technical issues that were causing some versions of the game to crash during Season 2 of the game. They oddly removed the character pulling the lever to activate the Drop Items in the Drop Item screen for some reason but otherwise the changes that 1047 made to the game were really good on top of the added new modes and badges system. But if only they could have spent more extra time to fix some of the other bugs that are still present in the console versions especially on the PS4 because you have a really great game that still demands a couple of bug fixes. Sure now the player base has been getting lower and declining recently and there is less and less players now due to new games that are out but you still connect to matches and play with both other players without too much issues.
Right now, 1047 is putting all of their focus and effort into the development of the sequel Splitgate 2 and so far, the gameplay they have shown for that is really promising and looks to go beyond then just improving the Portal System and I can't wait to see what it will be like after it officially launches on all platforms including the PlayStation 5 which I'll eventually play the game on. As for the fate of the original Splitgate I have heard that once Splitgate 2 does get a full release in 2025 they plan to at the very least allow the servers for the original to continue onwards for people who still want to enjoy the gameplay of the original which unlike Counter Strike 2 and Overwatch 2 which shutdown servers for the original Overwatch and Counter Strike Global Offensive just so they could update the monetisation 1047 is doing the right thing for their games. So if you want to enjoy a Free-to-Play shooter that breaks away from the ongoing trends that are being poorly and want something that goes back to that simple times of classic online multiplayer gameplay with a unique twist then enter through the Portal and see you on the other side.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game Score: 8.0/10
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Splitgate
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: 1047 Games
Genre: First Person Shooter
Age Rating: PEGI: 16+
Release Date: 27th July 2021 (Early Access), 25th August 2021 (Indefinite Beta), 15th September 2022 (Official Release)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Good Points:
---------------------
Fantastic classic multiplayer action and gunplay
Portals that add depth to map navigation and combat
Dozens of unique skins to unlock and try out and are easy to earn
Plenty of classic multiplayer based modes with different ways to play
The Bad Points:
---------------------
Saving gameplay clips and custom made maps are seriously buggy and often don't work
Server freezes randomly in the Waiting Room lobby for a few seconds which gets annoying
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------