Wildgate: Hands-On With a 20-Player Outer-Space FPS That Mixes Sci-Fi With Sea of Thieves

I guess I sorta suspected the day would come when my inner despot would awaken to wreak havoc on the galaxy, but I was surprised just how quickly it went down, after just a few minutes with the upcoming space-faring shooter: Wildgate. This chaotic sci-fi first-person shooter blends PvE and PvP objectives alongside exploration and combat on foot and aboard a ship that requires multiple people to operate – a formula that may feel quite familiar to any fellow Sea of Thieves fans. But unlike Sea of Thieves, where the chaos of player-on-player piracy is a somewhat infrequent and optional distraction, in Wildgate it’s the primary focus, and the inevitable clash of geared-up crews left me feeling the same heart-pounding intensity of a battle royale, as I barked commands at my crewmates and watched my enemies become just another cluster of space debris.

Wildgate pits five teams of four players against one another in a competitive space heist where time is of the essence and anything goes in these 20-40 minute brawls. Though there are 20 players in each procedurally generated world, you’re unlikely to run into any rival crews at the outset, instead using the calm before the storm to explore the miniature dungeons scattered throughout the cosmos. By delving into these places, slaying enemies that lie within, solving minor puzzles, and claiming loot, my squad and I gathered upgrades to bring back to our ship, including more powerful turrets, better shielding for our ship, ammo, healing items, and personal weaponry to carry into future battles. But our real purpose behind conquering these places as quickly as possible was to find the one and only Artifact hidden in each map. By collecting this all-important relic, every opposing team would be notified that we’d done so and be given an ongoing ping of our location as well. Then it was a mad dash to the Wildgate, and if we could fend off the enemy long enough to get to it, we’d instantly win the match and leave our adversaries choking on our space dust.

Naturally, every single rival player on the map would throw their full weight into preventing our escape, which is where the hilariously fun, full-on chaos of Wildgate shows itself. Though you can respawn infinitely after being killed, if someone destroys your ship, you’re knocked out of the match for good when killed, giving PvP especially high stakes. Ship-to-ship space combat is an intense, highly cooperative effort where you’ll need to share responsibility for piloting, manning mounted weapons, and repairing damage. The tools you’ve looted along the way can make that job easier and can have a pretty profound impact on how you approach combat. For example, on one run my crew found a bunch of close-range turrets that encouraged us to get up close and personal with the enemy to do high damage, while in another match I found a long-range sniper turret that allowed me to chip away at the enemy from a distance.

Of course, if you prefer a more subtle approach, you can always jump into space and jetpack your way aboard an enemy ship to blast enemies while they’re focused on piloting the ship, plant bombs to deal massive damage to their hull, steal the artifact out from under their noses if they’ve left it unguarded, or just hit the self-destruct button and defend the area until their core goes nuclear and wipes them out. This can turn the tables on an enemy that has better gear on their ship or has managed to outmaneuver you with their piloting skills by disrupting their ability to manage their vessel and pull focus from other, more pressing objectives.

If you’d rather not go through the trouble of hunting down an Artifact and racing through the escape gate, then you can do what I did and simply hunt down and eliminate every single enemy crew until you’re the last team standing. They can’t extract the Artifact if they’re dead, after all. This approach can prove especially effective since you’re able to scrap every downed ship for parts to add them to your growing arsenal. And if you’re especially slimy, like me, you can wait to ambush the enemy while they’re busy with a PvE dungeon, blowing up their ship while it’s unmanned, then swooping in to claim the hard-won loot from the area they were in the middle of clearing out. All’s fair in love and space piracy, my friends.

I was pleasantly surprised by the depth and replayability of this no-holds barred slugfest, and after more than six hours I still felt like I was only just beginning to figure out the best strategies to pull off a win consistently. For example, I learned the hard way that if you’re chasing an enemy ship who is seconds away from escaping through the Wildgate and you’re bombarding them with everything you’ve got, you should probably make sure you’re standing far enough away to not also blow yourself up in the process, resulting in a draw. Unlocking new characters and gear as you score XP also provides some new options, like the birdlike character, Mophs, whose unique ability to become invisible when boarding enemy ships can be especially useful in pulling off subterfuge.

After the small taste, I already get the impression that Wildgate will be one of those games where crazy things happen every single match that send me howling to my friends in victory or defeat, then swapping war stories with anyone who will listen the next morning, and if it manages to pull that off, it could very well be my next squad-based obsession.