The original Splitgate remains one of my favorite FPS games of all time. Despite it being a bit rough around the edges and lacking in the content department, I have extremely fond memories of it. Its blend of Halo-style gunplay and a slick portal system felt so good and, more importantly in a genre that can often feel samey and repetitive, so fresh. As you can imagine, now that the chance to play its shiny new sequel is here, I’m internally squealing with excitement. Sometimes externally too, truth be told. The new Splitgate 2 open alpha has just gone live, letting PC players (and some console players) try out its gameplay and test some new, large-scale, multi-team modes inspired by Halo and The Finals.
Let’s get straight into what’s new in this fresh playtest for Splitgate 2. Well, the big thing is that it’s open, of course – this is the first time the new free-to-play FPS game has been available to huge swathes of players following its closed alpha last year. With PC players being joined by those on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, its crossplay capabilities will also be put to the test.
There will be five different 4v4 arena modes in the open alpha, and the map pool from the closed beta will grow with two new battlegrounds called Bypass and Eden. You’ll be able to play Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hotzone, Spitball, and Firecracker.
While that in itself would be a generous offering for its first open playtest, 1047 Games is also introducing some new Multi-Team Portal Warfare modes. These are played on maps that are roughly “20 times the size of arena maps,” according to the studio’s co-founder and CEO Ian Proulx, and feature three teams of eight players.
“A bunch of us [at 1047] are Halo fans and we love Halo Big Team Battle, but we wanted to sort of [put] our own twist on it,” Proulx says in a media preview event. “So we took some inspiration from Halo. We took some inspiration from The Finals as well, which is a super fun game we’ve been enjoying, and we liked the multi-team aspect of it. And what we ended up with is something we think is really true to Splitgate and sort of takes that portal play to the next level. So three teams of eight. Tons of chaos.”
Multi-Team Portal Warfare will have just the one map, Glacier, for this open alpha, which will host scaled-up versions of two core arena modes – Domination and Hotzone.
Proulx makes a point of saying that, despite the wealth of modes in this open alpha, this represents “less than half” of the content that will be in the game when the Splitgate 2 release date arrives. “We actually have two other major components of the game that we’re going to be revealing in the near future,” he says. “So we look at this as like we’ve now shown off two out of four major things that we’ve got coming up,” those being the core 4v4 arena modes and now the Multi-Team Portal Warfare experience.
The new alpha also adds more weaponry to the three classes its tested so far, so that means a grand total of 24 base weapons to choose from. On top of that, some maps and modes may also feature pick-up power weapons, including the iconic BFB melee weapon from the original Splitgate. Don’t know what BFB means? Well, it’s a baseball bat… and it’s big… I’ll let you fill in the rest.
The Splitgate 2 open alpha is live right now and will run until Monday, March 3 at 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT / 6pm CET. That means you’ve only got a few days to give it a try, so get to it.
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