Merge Gaming: Halo meets Portal

A player portaled directly into a swarm of enemy red players, and he might not make it in this scene from Splitgate.

Graphic from PC Gamer

A player portaled directly into a swarm of enemy red players, and he might not make it in this scene from Splitgate.

You can hear the footsteps of an enemy, but you can’t see them. Voom! Suddenly, a portal springs behind you and you are gunned down by an invisible fiend. What game are you playing, you might ask? Splitgate, of course.

Splitgate is an online first-person shooter game (FPS) that immediately gets you hooked from the moment you download it’s measly 15 Gigabytes of storage on PC, 12-12.5 on Xbox One, and 30-ish on PlayStation 4. Portaling (basic teleporting with a large oval “portal”) all over the map, getting insane replays, and just generally having fun, Splitgate has it all.

Created by 1047 Games in 2019, it peaked with a whopping 4,673 players in one month. Averaging around 150-200 a month, in August 2021, the player count skyrocketed with 36.2 thousand players in a month. A blurb on the Splitgate website states that “Through their flagship game, Splitgate, 1047 Games aims to bring back the glory days of PvP shooters. It’s easy to see why IGN described Splitgate as ‘Halo meets Portal.’”

Splitgate is a revolution in gaming.

A game combining Halo 3 and Portal 2 would seem like an expensive game, but like so many others (Fortnite, Warzone, CS:GO) it prides itself in being a totally free game.

A wonderful element that Portal 2 brings in is portals. “Like Portal, Splitgate offers players two trans-dimensional warp holes to play with. Just shoot one on a wall and the other somewhere else and you’ve got an instant door between the two,” says Polygon Reviews. This can lead to amazing kills that are impossible in any other everyday game. I rate it 4.3/5, accounting on the notice that after a month or two, the game seems stale with small updates dotting every once in a while.

The game features memorable maps such as Stadium, Pantheon, Helix, Club Silo, Atlantis, Highwind, Olympus, Abyss, Oasis, Lavawell, Crag, Impact, Foregone Destruction, and four different “Simulation” modes. Splitgate has exciting multiplayer game modes such as Team Deathmatch, Free for All, King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, and many, many more. Bringing remarkable weapons such as the Carbine and Assault Rifle, and trigger-happy name-takers such as the Railgun and Rocket Launcher, and the legendary BFB (Big Friggin’ Bat).

For gamers who stay loyal to Halo with it’s run-and-gun style, and for the gamers who enjoy Portal’s puzzle experience, Splitgate might be your new favorite game.