Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting where someone stood up, took a deep breath, and pitched a first-person shooter with portals.
How would you go about convincing someone that the one thing missing from the recent crop of first-person shooters is the star of GLADoS' malevolent funhouse, the portal gun? Me, I don't think I'd even try - and I'm not sure anyone could have convinced me, either. Well. Until I actually sat down and played Splitgate, that is.
For what it's worth, there's a part of me that instinctively (read: stupidly) pushes back against fads and "viral" games. Despite developing the gaming tastes of a 12-year-old in my latter years (all I want to do these days is shoot stuff and watch things explode), Splitgate's marriage of FPS and portals seemed gimmicky - maybe even a touch gauche. After several merry hours with it, however, I can confidently confirm that the hyperbole is not hyperbole at all: Splitgate is astonishingly good fun.