Spectre Divide | Impressions – XboxEra

Tactical shooters don’t work on a controller. I’ve been pretty cemented on that thought—a controller could never catch up to the accuracy of a mouse and keyboard set up, not to mention that most of these games almost never feel good to move around in with thumbsticks. The few Counter-Strikes and the recent ‘Valorant’ port have demonstrated nothing more than the fact that you’ll always be playing an inferior, clumsier version of these tactical shooters when on console. It’s why I avoid precision shooters altogether on controller—with the only exception I can think of these days being ‘Rainbow Six Siege’ if not for its slow-paced combat with a rather decent amount of aim assist.

Mind, there’s nothing wrong with aim assist. If anything, it’s basically the way to go for shooters on consoles. Especially since Microsoft seems to hold a particular grudge against gyro/accelerometer support in their controllers, making it much more difficult for developers to implement more involved (and arguably far superior) methods of aiming. So, colour me a bit surprised when I took developer Mountaintop Studios’ free-to-play 3v3 shooter ‘Spectre Divide‘ for a spin, with a controller no less, and found myself engaged! Not just in the way the gunplay worked on a controller but also with the idea of the game itself—a shooter where players have a body double, a “spectre”, which you can swap between at any point during a match.

I got to play the game a couple of days before its official “2.0” launch as Game Director Lee explained to me. As of three days ago, Spectre Divide is now available on Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles alongside the already available PC release (via Steam). You can go play it yourself to get an idea of the game right now! But hey, if you’re already here, indulge me with a moment of your time. There’s a solid tactical shooter here that’s worth checking out.

With the hour or so I had during our play session, I got to party up with Spectre Divide’s game director and (I believe lead) level designer. After warning them that my grandmother was likely a more viable teammate, we jumped into a room via a shared code and made our way right into the fray of things. Like all tactical shooters, Spectre Divide’s main mode is “search and destroy”—attackers carry the ZEUS (read “bomb”) to one of two points on the map that the defenders are protecting. A classic for sure, played by millions if not thousands daily. Spectre Divide’s main gimmick, the “spectre” game mechanic, aims to keep this mode fresh by giving players a unique “traversal” method that really speeds up the game even if there’s only six players on the map.

It took me a bit to figure things out. Lee helped me out a bunch by pointing out the available play options one can take with their body double. For one, at the beginning of a round, attackers and defenders are able to place their bodies across a rather large spawn location to better let them play their objective. Say the defenders assume the attackers will be going for Point A, but it turns out that Point B was their objective all along! Well, what the defenders can now do is body swap to their other spectre and rush towards the next defensive position. You can also throw your body double at any point in the map, provided you wait out the timer for the transfer to occur. You can’t just willy nilly make use of your spectre to decimate the enemy this way, forcing players to take a tactical approach to positioning.

The body double can also be thrown towards higher points of a map or through grates, letting you cut the long walks out of advancing towards an objective. The spectre can also handle certain tasks on their own—take planting the ZEUS for example: if I were to set my character in the planting state and swap over to my spectre to watch their back, my character will continue to plant the bomb. Little things like this keep the action hot as any approaching player will not only have to keep an eye on a planter and his cronies but also the fact that they might not actually be where you think they are.

And just like other tactical shooters, players will purchase their weapons and equipment at the beginning of a round with their earned monies. What separates everyone, however, is their chosen sponsors which dictate which skills they’ll be able to bring to the battlefield. I didn’t really get a chance to mess around with the options too much, but I stuck with the one sponsor that let me deploy smoke grenades and deploy a unique trap that both cloaks itself and explodes if enemies get too close, slowing them down in the process. I like this system as it allows players to both customise their avatars without having to tie down a specific skillset to a character personality (like Valorant would do).

The character controller also feels great to play with on a controller. As I mentioned earlier, shooting feels great here especially since I’ve typically found tactical shooters to be dreadful on anything but a mouse and keyboard. There’s just enough aim assist and smoothing that console players will feel right at home with, alongside some modern amenities like aiming down sights and even sprinting. Coming from games like Counter-Strike, I hardly sprinted around the maps as I just didn’t have the muscle memory to do so in games like these. But thanks to the spectre system, I honestly didn’t need to run about the medium-sized maps. I’d simply zip back if I knew something was going down elsewhere. Grenades also have two mode of tossing, letting players get the right amount of force needed to deliver the edge their team needs to push forward.

An issue I took with the game ended up coming in the form of its visuals. I don’t think they’re bad, mind you, I like the sort of cel-shaded realistic look the characters have against the futuristic backdrop that permeates Spectre Divide’s cities and sewers. But a modern FPS problem came up: I had no idea who the bad guy was half the time. At least, that’s the way I seemed to behave like when I was reviewing the footage I had taken. Now, games like ‘Halo Infinite’ solved this by aggressively marking enemy spartans with a red outline and a light shading in between, but in Spectre Divide sometimes that wasn’t always clear. Maybe it’s because I had only put in two matches of games, but even titles like Counter-Strike very clearly differentiate OPFOR through distinct character models and motifs.

With the short hour I had with Spectre Divide, I walked away from a game that I thought had strong, unique mechanics that played amazing on a controller scheme. There’s a decent amount of customisation here for players to outfit themselves into and a lot of potential play-by-plays thanks to the body double system in place. For players looking for an arena-style tactical shooter with some modern choices, I think Spectre Divide is worth a play. Cross-play is also available between consoles and the game is free-to-play, so there’s absolutely nothing to lose besides many long hours if you get pulled into mechanical excellence. ∎