Vidjama Gmaes Work

I beat the battle pass in two hours.

Splitgate 2 is officially in open beta. Well, it’s been in open beta for over a week now and at the time I’m writing this currently has about five days left in the beta season. Not that it really matters because the beta season battle pass can be finished in roughly 2.2 hours. Probably less if you’re better at the game than I am.

I don’t plan on playing Splitgate 2 much once it launches. In fact the beta will probably be my last time playing it. They did get five bucks out of me for the beta battle pass though, so that’s something. Let’s talk about it.

My biggest complaint with Splitgate 2 is that the devs seem terrified about going all in on the portals, the whole gimmick of the game. So they drastically cut back on where portals could be set down. As a result, I found myself rarely using the portals outside of throwing one on top another player’s portal to block it. It’s also just as gratifying killing someone through their own portal as it was in the first game.

Locking weapons and abilities behind certain classes is certainly a choice, although the abilities are borderline useless. You do see people use abilities from time to time but given the fast pace nature of the game, you’re often better off just rushing your enemy and blowing their head off than tossing down a shield wall. Passive abilities like the radar do get a lot of use because they can be activated while still running and gunning.

And I do think some of the game modes are pretty neat. Splitball is a fun concept; balls periodically spawn on the field and you have to capture them and the first team to capture three balls wins. However the balls are still in play once they are captured so the winning team has to both attack and defend while the losing team focuses on attack. It’s a nice balance. There’s another mode where you have to kill the entire other team before they respawn. A balance of offense and defense, especially if you’re the last person standing.

I’m also hesitant to support Splitgate 2 after what happened with Splitgate 1, and how this one seems to be going down an even worse trajectory. I know, it’s not healthy to think about Steam concurrent numbers. But Splitgate kicked off with a peak of 67k concurrent users and collapsed in about six months. Splitgate 2’s beta is hitting a concurrent peak of 12k on Steam.

I have my doubts on how long Splitgate 2 can survive, but I’m hoping it gets a few years of support at least.