The Splitgate 2 open alpha is live now and very fun

It took a few matches of Splitgate 2 before I understood what 1047 Games was going for in the sequel. A preview session held a few weeks ago took us through every mode on offer in the alpha running today through March 2, and while I couldn't stay for the whole thing, I stuck around long enough to fall in love with Hotzone, 1047's take on King of the Hill.

In Hotzone, the first team to capture two hills wins the round. The twist lies in the respawns: Getting back into the fight takes longer and longer as the round goes on, but teammates can shave seconds off the timer by getting kills. It functions sort of like a comeback mechanic in a MOBA—if your whole team dies but you suddenly pop off with a three killstreak, they all come back in a jiffy. I also checked out Splitball, which reminded me of Halo Griffball, except once you score a goal enemies can sneak into your base and steal them back.

But the big draw of this weekend's alpha is Splitgate 2's new multi-team 8v8v8 modes, a major escalation of the 4v4 Arena matches I've played so far. To fit the big teams, multi-team games are played on Glacier, a map "20 times bigger than any of our arena maps," according to 1047. Multi-team is not yet live in the alpha, but I'll be eager to see it myself.

Maybe most important to this latest alpha is a handful of significant changes made since last year's playtest based on community feedback:

• We heard that you wanted more action, so we made respawns shorter and rounds longer.
• We also heard that you wanted more portaling options, so we added more portal walls to our existing maps, and added new portal opportunities like a Launch Portal, a combination of a portal wall and a launch pad that will send you flying.

I thought I noticed more portal surfaces on maps, so that's nice. I was one of the Splitgate 1 fans who thought last year's playtest felt a bit too much like Call of Duty with occasional portals, so it's great to have more opportunities to use this game's best feature.

Splitgate 2's open alpha is live from February 27 to March 2 on PC, PS5, and Xbox. Crossplay is enabled, so let your controller buddies know Splitgate is back.