by theygamesWith backing from FPS legend Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek and a unique dynamic allowing you to swap on-the-fly between two separate bodies, Spectre Divide is one of the most distinctive games challenging Valve giant Counter-Strike 2. Despite a rocky launch week, the free Steam game has continued to pull in a consistent 10,000 players each day, a very respectable number for a new game from an independent team. And now developer Mountaintop Studios is rolling out a speed increase along with an experimental change to the usual economy of casual games.
Spectre Divide takes the snappy, tactical gameplay of Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant and combines it with a clever twist. In this FPS game, you’re actually in teams of just three people per side – but each player has access to a second body, the eponymous Spectre, which you can inhabit at any point. This allows you to cover several areas, harass your opponents from two directions in quick succession, and even leap back into the fray after your first body has fallen.
To help you get around, the new Spectre Divide update has increased forward movement speed on all weapons. This change applies to all forms of motion – running, walking, crouching, and ADS alike – meaning that moving forward is faster in basically every case, with the sole exception of melee movement speed. “This change should let you traverse the map more quickly with minimal impacts to gunplay,” Mountaintop explains. In addition to this, your team’s Spectres will now spawn closer to you at the start of rounds.
Alongside this, Mountaintop is testing out a new feature for casual games. Each round, you’ll get free heavy armor, full equipment, and more money than before. That should let you experiment a lot more in unranked matches. And if it all goes wrong for you, the surrender button has now been made available at any time during casual matches. “Let us know how you feel about these changes and we’ll adjust if needed,” Mountaintop says.
Elsewhere, you’ll notice a more vibrant look to the game thanks to reworked color grading, improved stat graphs to prioritize readability, and the ability to enable an experimental ultrawide mode for those on monitors beyond the standard 16:9 aspect ratio. Player standing view height has also been increased slightly – along with making you feel slightly taller, this also means that aiming parallel with the ground (or “straight ahead,” as Mountaintop describes it) will result in headshots at any range.
This latest Spectre Divide update is out now – you can read the full patch notes on Steam. There are lots more bug fixes and improvements to matchmaking and ranked progression, along with a list of ongoing issues that Mountaintop is working to resolve.
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