Francis Sarrazin

I have to say something, because I was NOT expecting it from THAT specific game. After 2h gameplay, electricity shut down. I was enraged and prepared to never touch the game again, because I knew what it meant : no save, 2 hours lost, maybe more. Electricity even shut down once again during console data repair, just for the chery on top. Well I couldn't believe my eyes when I opened up the game.... and appeared right at the beginning of the room I was in before the unexpected crash. It seems I had taken for granted my experience would be unpleasant : do not do the same mistake. This game is excellent, very engaging, immersive, and uses the ps5 technologies, 3D audio and haptic feedback, constantly and flawlessly.

New classic and part of my top games of all times with Zelda III, Celeste, The Witness, Half Life, Spyro and Deemo, just to bring perspective. This is the absolute coop videogame we might always have wished for. One that is absolutely suitable for everyone, even non-gamers. One that is a love letter to so many things that made our youth. One that can only be described as an unstoppable force of surprises and simple joy. Best played as a couple, and for the magic to shine, do not look at any trailer or video of the game prior to taking the rollercoaster ride of this generation.

Players are maybe too young to notice, but while Splitgate principle is based on Portal, which gives it an amazing deepness of gameplay as it is combined with a very calculated pace (not too slow or too few players or too big maps so that there is no action, but not too fast or too many players that strategy is impossible), Splitgate is also definitely more of a love letter to Unreal Tournament, very first of the name. The maps are simple in style and revolve around a specific idea, but yet the smaller they are, the harder it is to find your bearings as they get rather complex in design - talking about you, Highwind -, so you often feel lost and must strategize or quickly react according to what you see and know at a given moment, at least until you learn the maps in a way no other modern games do. It also benefits from NOT being an hero arena shooter as no player has any advantage over any other with exception of pure skills. Everything else in that game is also calculated almost to perfection for both the player enjoyment and company revenues: the game is free to play, and most certainly is one of the best available, the developers answer quickly to problems and provided more servers as demand grew quicker than expected, the rounds last exactly 8 minutes so that a clearly loosing game is not a problem (and players tend not to quit midgame like in Rocket League as the fact of playing in itself is more fun than the fact of winning) and they chain in a way that makes sure you simply always want to say "one more". The only way I found to quit between rounds is by going through the item shop that looks like any others, which is a very very clever design not dissimilar to the cashiers alley chocolate and candy produces. The game knows it cannot legally make you buy randomized loot in any way, but kept the randomness that players loved and put it in literally free lootboxes that are distributed quite often and fairly with daily challenges amongst the ways to acquire them. Not unlike Unreal Tournament again, you have to play simple modes to unlock complex and competitive modes, which means more fun for you as starter players are more often match together, and you cannot do competitive unless you have active experience. I could go on and on, but this game is my new personal Rocket League, a game that I know I can play because rounds do not last too long to be a conflict with my schedule, that has enough action and deepness to allow me to feel thrill and fun while being extremely easy to understand and dive in, and for now, that allows me to have my multiplayer experience of the day that yet isn't filled with total idiots, tryhards and others that usually destroy such experiences. I gave about 40$ in paid loot to that game, not because I fell into the trap of a clever design to make me spend, but because I feel playing this game for free is a ripoff, and they deserve my money to make it an even better experience with more maps. Thanks for reviving the REAL arena shooter experience.

This game hit me in a way not many others did. Because of my own relation with music and arts, hiding behind images and pseudonyms? Because of my numerous attempts at creativity, only bound by eyes and ears of others rather than being for the simple purpose of entertaining my own interests? Because of how I grew up in an environment where the world was expected of me and I was made to always feel like I could not deliver? Because of my own actual name, which I was lead me to believe was something uninterresting, dull even, that I should hide? One would think this game is about the music. It would be a shame not to realize it is about one true self.