Splitgate: Arena Warfare has been out for a few weeks now, but it has not quite found its audience. This is a team based first person shooter that throws portal guns into the mix. What sounds like a tacked-on gimmick is actually what makes Splitgate: Arena Warfare one of the cleverest shooters of 2019.
How to Download Splitgate: Arena Warfare
You can download this free game from Steam. To begin, click on the button located below the review. There is also Splitgate: Arena Warfare – Founder’s Edition, which is a paid DLC and which contains such goodies as additional skins and a cool armor set.
The Game Review
The idea of the game is that you are on one of two 4-man teams. You can play in various different match types such as team deathmatch, domination, and king of the hill. Of course, each game has its own “objective” but if you have played any first-person shooter in the last 20 years you will feel right at home here.
The big “gimmick” of Splitgate: Arena Warfare is that as well as standard weapons. You also have a portal gun. You can shoot a portal onto these blue walls. You shoot an entrance and an exit and you can then use this to your advantage. The use of your portal is really up to you.
You can use it to get out of trouble. Or you can use it in a very tactical way to give your team the advantage! This is where the “skill” of Splitgate: Arena Warfare comes into play. Placing a portal to give you a better shot or to set up, an ambush is really cool and makes you feel like a tactical mastermind when you pull it off. It is what sets the game apart from other first-person shooters.
The enemy portals are a different color from yours. One thing that is neat is that you cannot see through them like you can your own teams’ portals. However, you can still go through an enemy portal, but you do not know what is waiting for you on the other side! This makes it very tense as it could be a trap. On the flip side of this though, you could get lucky and find a random guy all alone.
To stop people setting up a portal and just camping. The portals will flash when the enemy is near one. This means you can open fire through the portal and take down anyone who is trying to camp on the other side. It also serves as a warning that you might not want to just jump right through.
Splitgate: Arena Warfare has different arenas for you to play in. What is very weird is that it takes around 10 hours or so for the game to give you access to all of the arenas! This means that you will see the same arenas over and over again and the fact that the game has a rather bland kind of style can make them all feel the same.
The actual shooting mechanics of Splitgate: Arena Warfare are not bad. They are nothing great, but the guns feel decent enough. There is some slow down here and there, but I would assume that will be fixed down the line. One thing that really needs to be fixed is matchmaking!
As I said in the intro, Splitgate: Arena Warfare has not quite found an audience just yet. This means it can take far longer than it should to get a game started. Not to mention the fact that with a smaller player pool, often the teams are very unbalanced which can be frustrating. You do level up due to wins so at least this stops people playing for themselves.
Splitgate: Arena Warfare is free to play. As I write this the only microtransactions that are in the game are for cosmetic items. That is awesome and I think that is really cool of the developers to do that. I just hope that they do “jazz” the game up a little bit to make it a tad more appealing.
Splitgate: Arena Warfare is a game that if it was not for those portal guns I would not bother playing if I am honest. Thanks to the portal guns though, this is a first-person shooter that offers you a lot to think about before you attack. It is not just all about the guns, but getting in the best position to use those guns! As it is free to play, it is well worth checking out as it is a fun experience.
