Spectre Divide Hands-on Preview

Mountaintop invited us to an exclusive event, where I got to play alongside 100 other content creators on their newest tactical shooter title — Spectre Divide. But before we get into the three hours I got to play, let's talk a bit about the team behind the game.

Mountaintop was founded in 2020 (in the ages of yore when the pandemic was still all the buzz), and it went from a small group of people working on their newest title to 70 total remote developers. One of the most prominent names in their team is none other than VP and Game Director Lee Horn, who has previously worked with Riot Games on League of Legends and Valorant and had a hand at Apex Legends, too.

The Mountaintop team is formed from a lot of FPS lovers, and they even worked together with Shroud (content creator and former Valorant professional) to prepare their title for the higher leagues. Though, that's not to say that it isn't focused on newcomers, with a lower entry level for those who aren't into the genre and aren't fans of watching after they're the first ones out on a round.

Now, that all sounds good on paper — Mountaintop made a lot of promises. But how does it translate into the actual gameplay?

Starting up, I'd like to note that I don't have any experience regarding tactical shooters. While I do play the odd shooter here and there, my preferred titles lie among the platformers and soulslikes of the world; I was way outside of my comfort zone in Spectre Divide, and it gave me a great look at the skill floor and newcomer accessibility.

Once we got hands-on, I was assisted by two guides due to my admittedly poor skill level. I went through the tutorial and the guides helped me understand some of the important mechanics pre-game.

In Spectre Divide, the team wanted to avoid becoming a hero shooter to let you have your own personality, but they still wanted things like skills to be part of the experience. From this came the idea of Sponsors — these dictate the skills that you'll have in your match. Aside from the abilities, you'll be able to select all of the cosmetic side of things: your character, the Spectre, and your weapon. And as a quick sidenote, the customisation isn't extensive, but it's enough to give you a personality, and you get to choose things like voice irrelevant to the way your character looks.

There are eight total Sponsors at the moment throughout the preview, with four of them being locked behind the Fame system, which works as your currency to unlock things for free, if you don't want to pay real money for it. As a free-to-play title, there are a lot of microtransaction opportunities, with even a battle pass tab ready to go for release, but for the most part, it's cosmetic items.

The way unlocking works is that you choose what you want to get Endorsement on and work towards it throughout the matches, though your individual skill has little impact aside from a few points here and there, so it’s more of an endurance run than a sprint to those who have the highest KDA. Having bought a skin to test it out, you get to pick from several endorsement items, including Sponsors and skin upgrades (think of these like alternate colours of the skin you bought).

In my three hours of playing, I managed to acquire 20,000 Fans, which is about 10% into unlocking one of the Sponsors; this is considering that I was unable to complete some of the Daily Contracts and none of the Weekly ones that you get. Realistically, in a world where you get to play a few hours per day throughout the week, you'll eventually unlock enough to get the Sponsor that you want.

The four free ones that are available from the get-go cover a wide range of playstyles, giving you a good feel for which of the more advanced Sponsors you want to go for with your hard-earned Fame. They work like more advanced and complex versions of the free ones — you have support, aggro, recon, and zone control to try out, and each works differently in-game.

Of course, we've gone through all of this without talking about the most important and unique aspect of Spectre Divide — Duality. Unlike traditional tactical shooters, you will be playing as two bodies with one consciousness, and you'll need to position yourself strategically to ensure that your Spectre isn't caught out, and in turn, you don't lose one of the two lives you have in the game. Two bodies means that you can die twice before the match is over, which directly translates into more gameplay opportunities; died to a sniper whilst entering through B main? You can use your second life to try to counter-snipe or flank as needed. It stops the frustrating part of tactical shooters (which is having to watch your team play) and makes it a more dynamic and gameplay-heavy experience without taking away from the hecticness of battle.

In-game, it's a 3v3 scenario where you'll swap after seven rounds from attacking or defending. Taking into account each body, it mixes the hecticness of 5v5, where you might turn around the corner and find a player, or their Spectre, and engage in combat. Your Spectre isn't fully useless, either, as it works as a great recon opportunity since they can still hear footsteps and you'll be warned when a player is near it or if it's in direct danger, giving you a lot of information if you place it properly.

This is the part where the skill ceiling is much higher than normal — managing both bodies at the same time means that you have the opportunity to make fantastic plays. Plays I was, quite frankly, too bad to pull off. Given I only played for three total hours, I definitely got significantly better and learnt a lot from the classes I was playing, but I could feel the skill ceiling was far out of my reach, and some might argue a bit too far off, as it can sometimes feel discouraging to have all of the opportunities to make the right plays and simply being unable to achieve that dream.

Everything is built and balanced around playing as two characters, and though that sounds quite daunting, it surprisingly fit like a glove. Carrying your Spectre around by throwing the puck and positioning it with myself felt almost like second nature around the second hour, and by the third and final few matches, I was able to pull off plays that I could only dream of at the start. Whenever I did fail, I knew I could improve mechanically, and it also didn't mean I was out of the match permanently, as I still had the opportunity to play further back and support my teammates who did have their Spectre alive.

This is where support characters felt far stronger than the aggressive ones, where it felt more worth it to have more health for both Spectre or the capability to offer vision when you are pretty much out of lives. Admittedly, there are strengths to the more aggressive Sponsors, though I wasn't able to live up to their full potential, but being able to provide more support and information is crucial, especially when you're able to recognise which enemy you spotted might be a still Spectre that you can quickly snipe out of the round without having pushback from its host.

One of my favourite features was by farthe waySpectre Divide handles teams. Your skill level is calculated based on the way you play with the unique party that you're in rather than the individual skill of every player, which means that higher-skill gamers will be able to play with the lower-skill ones without having to worry about breaking their MMR. For me — being the worst player in this case — it's a breath of fresh air to know that my failures couldn't possibly bring down my superior teammates, and it gives a refreshing feeling to be able to play without worrying about losing your personal MMR. That, paired with the fact that you get Team Contracts that reward you with even more fame to unlock more stuff means that you are incentivised to play this with friends, and that's when I felt Spectre Divide was at its strongest.

I'm not a big fan of shooter titles — I've had limited exposure to the genre, and the only PvP ones I've played are barely 10 hours of Apex Legends and one binge session that lasted for about two weeks of Overwatch 2. Despite this, I felt I was able to hold my own against content creators and press who knew the genre more than I did, and I had a surprisingly good time. Considering Spectre Divide is releasing as a F2P title, this might just be a game I pick up to enjoy a match or two every so often, and I'd say — as a person who has avoided the genre like the plague up until now — that's a massive win for Mountaintop.