Free-to-play arena shooter Splitgate is out on Steam today, giving everyone the chance to find out what Portal might have been like if it was Unreal Tournament with Halo’s guns.
That pretty much sums up the premise of Splitgate, and the game makes no effort to mask its influences, as Tyler discovered when he played an early build at PAX East last year. There’s the perspective-bending linked portals, there’s jetpacks and low-grav areas, and there’s punchy shotguns and big old rocket launchers.
The launch trailer (above) gives you a pretty good sense of how disorienting Splitgate can be, but it also gets the old brain cells churning at the tactical possibilities that Portal’s wormhole mechanics add to the high-speed arena shooter genre. Being able to constantly hurl yourself through space, changing your trajectory and sailing over opponents’ heads as you approach terminal velocity passing through portal after portal, ripping off consecutive headshots from the hip… it’s dizzying stuff, and I suspect that’s doubly true if, like me, you’re just about done packing up for the move out of your 30s.
But hey, if that sounds like the kind of trip you’re into, you can play it now for free on Steam.