Split Fiction review | Eurogamer.net

Split Fiction isn’t your dad’s It Takes Two – which is just as well, as that dad’s currently a tiny wooden puppet being serenaded by a singing couple’s counselling book. It might look and feel very similar to It Takes Two, particularly in the way its dual protagonists Zoe and Mio can leap, bound and grapple with playful exuberance through its bevy of winding and fast-paced action sequences. But it doesn’t take long to realise this is an altogether different beast that’s easily Hazelight Studio’s most ambitious and inventive co-op adventure yet.

It’s chock full of so many great and brilliantly realised ideas that you keep waiting for the moment it will run out of steam, only it never does across the whole of its ten-hour run-time. It’s a staggering feat of imagination, which – for a game about an evil publishing company using an ominous machine to siphon ideas straight out of writers’ brains to regurgitate them into easily marketable virtual reality slop – is a pleasing and emphatic middle finger to the ongoing debate about the threat of AI. Only precise, human craftsmanship can produce a game of this calibre, and the way it constantly surprises and delights through its tactile controls and strong, empathetic storytelling is a league above anything else this studio’s attempted before.

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It’s also quite a bit more demanding than It Takes Two, so before we go any further, consider this a warning to any parents eyeing up the possibility of playing this with their kids. There may be more tantrums than triumphs if your would-be co-op partner doesn’t already have some It Takes Two muscle memory under their belt, as Split Fiction builds on that game’s snappy, platforming moveset while also piling on dozens – and I mean dozens – of new challenges and dextrous button wrangling in the process (though generous checkpoints and a plentiful supply of control and difficulty settings will no doubt take some of the edge off here).

Still, assuming you and your co-op partner are up to the task, Split Fiction easily purloins It Takes Two’s crown as the best co-op game around. It gets so much mileage out of its central conceit of a fantasy writer and sci-fi novelist getting mixed up in virtual simulations of each other’s stories, taking us from Dune-like industrial escapes and rainy, cyberpunk highways to shape-shifting forest realms and dragon nests high in the mountains, and plenty more besides, as they try and find a way home. They do so by following a trail of purple glitches, zapping them from one story idea to the next, and giving each a deeper glimpse into what makes their newfound partner tick.

Mio is a cool, no-nonsense lover of sci-fi, for example, and her stories tell of daring escapes, secretive break-ins and loud and explosive open rebellions against huge, faceless authorities. Zoe, on the other hand, can’t resist a happily ever after, taking comfort in the cosy and altogether more hopeful possibilities afforded by the fantasy genre. The two couldn’t be more different, and at first, they’re both very unwilling participants in each other’s respective storylines. But as with all good buddy yarns, there’s a gradual thawing and understanding that takes place as they get to know each other, and its lean and entertaining script does a great job of bringing you along for the ride. They’re much more agreeable hangs than that dreadful singing and dancing book from It Takes Two, even if Zoe’s obsession with trying to psychoanalyse Mio’s plotlines can be a little on the nose at times.

Unsurprisingly, there are indeed deeper, personal traumas driving both young women, but the way those fears and feelings are teased out onscreen through your actions is expertly done. I’d be loath to spoil too much, as this is a game whose twists and surprises are best discovered for yourself, but if you’ll indulge me with just one example that really made a big impression, it’s this. Late on in the game, there’s a level whose big, emotional story beat is centred around the idea of letting go of negative emotions. And throughout, you and your co-op partner are constantly activating abilities by holding and releasing various buttons, avoiding obstacles by clasping on tight to peg-studded wheels before one player lets go to swing the two of you across to the next wheel to return the favour, and in one particularly memorable moment, you end up riding a Phogs-like creature with two heads, with one end clamping down on a water drain, while the other turns its gob into a makeshift hose to create a path forward. It’s a truly masterful melding of subject matter through play, and it’s this kind of sophistication that’s on show throughout.

This deep connection between its story and your individual objectives is what elevates Split Fiction beyond just being an enjoyable whirlwind of ideas being chucked at you one after another. The sheer variety in what it asks of you here is astonishingly broad, and just as with It Takes Two, Split Fiction’s best moments come when Zoe and Mio must use their respective powers in tandem to help them both progress. These powers are unique in every level, whether it’s operating a pinball machine with one player as a ball and the other on paddle duty, switching gravity plains to perform stomach-lurching perspective tricks, transforming into a piranha-repelling otter to heave a bamboo reed through a watery gauntlet of man-eating plants, adopting a Diablo-esque isometric perspective to belch acid and charge into enemies as two colourful dragons, or even having one player trying to deactivate a self-destruct sequence on a speeding motorbike by means of a ludicrous homage to Google’s Captcha tests. On their own, these would all be brilliant little snippets of asymmetric magic, but it’s the way Hazelight uses them to reveal more about their winning heroines over time that really makes them shine. And don’t worry – I know I said I’d try and avoid spoilers, but the examples I’ve listed here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s plenty more to discover along the way here.

Admittedly, given that these fantasy and sci-fi-scapes are both meant to be living, breathing representations of story ideas in each writer’s head, it is somewhat amusing to see how much they both fall back on certain platforming tropes: wall-running across flat surfaces, hopping between long poles and grapple-hooking across great swathes of sci-fi and fantasy real estate. But if anything, these moments of swift and snappy traversal are what’s considered downtime in Split Fiction – something to keep your fingers busy as the game lays down a touch more exposition before the next big puzzle moment, or just giving you an opportunity to catch your breath after a climactic chase sequence.

The best breathers, however, are Split Fiction’s Side Stories, which you’ll find dotted throughout its main levels. These portals take Zoe and Mio to little, self-contained locations that are entirely unrelated to the main plotline, but whose ‘unfinished draft’ status give Hazelight a brilliant excuse to go truly hog-wild on some ridiculously fun outtakes. One sees Zoe narrating and drawing a story in a notebook, for example, rubbing out weapons and scratching in obstacles on the fly. Another transforms them both into pigs, one of whom can fly through the power of farting rainbows out their bum while the other can send themselves skyward with a snap of their slinky-esque torso. My favourite was a fantasy night market where seeking out ghostly cats to open a series of locked gates had little nods to everything from Baba Yaga to Dark Souls. Others are more throwaway – exhilarating one-and-done feats of desert surfing, wind gliding, or careening through space wreckage to give you a little blast of adrenaline. Or, indeed, shock and appall you with comedic grimness. If you’re still recovering from It Takes Two’s elephant scene, just wait until you get to the sugary sweet children’s party story.

The best thing about the Side Stories, though, is that they’re always the opposite genre of what you’re playing in the main story. So if you’re in one of Zoe’s fantasy stories, for example, all the Side Stories will be Mio-flavoured sci-fi jaunts, and vice versa. They’re entirely optional, and some are quite well-hidden, but they always come at just the right moment to give you a blast of something different before you carry on. The main levels are quite lengthy affairs, but the Side Stories do a brilliant job of keeping the game’s pace up, and ensuring that no one idea outstays its welcome for too long. Without fail, my co-op partner and I always felt refreshed and ready to carry on with the task at hand once we’d finished these little side diversions – although I’d go as far as saying they’re as integral to the main plot as anything else here, as they’re not just brilliantly conceived levels in their own right, but the diversity of ideas on show here is still doing the work of telling us more about its two main characters.

That’s not to say Split Fiction is all serious business all the time. Just like It Takes Two and A Way Out before it, there are plenty of signature Hazelight moments of pure, unadulterated play to be found here, too – activities that (mostly) don’t have any achievements related to them, or any real point in being there at all beyond just mucking about. Water slides and chilling out in donut rubber rings in a swimming pool, skimming stones across a lake, drinking potions to turn into balls of yarn you can roll around and unravel in real-time, or indeed turn into each other to do your best mock-impression of them… They’re all completely unnecessary – the kind of excess that normally gets expunged in the modern development landscape. But they all contribute to the feeling that these worlds are alive and fizzing with possibility. They make these spaces feel more human – more playful – even though they’re all just, in theory, simulations of words on a page or half-formed ideas. Heck, while the evil publishing house that’s trapped Zoe and Mio here may have the worst of intentions, their technology sure does a great job of making the prospect of these Ready Player One-like realities seem very appealing indeed.

If all that wasn’t enough, Split Fiction tops it off with an almighty finale, upping the stakes of its ideas and inventiveness even further in ways that truly dazzle and delight at every turn. It sticks the landing in terrific fashion here, making your eyes, fingers and thumbs thrum with excitement. Everything feels so polished, and is executed with such confidence and style that it’s impossible not to fall in love with it. And as the credits roll and you look back on everything you’ve done – all the wild places you’ve been, all the mad moments you’ve experienced, and all the properly great fun you’ve had together – it doesn’t take two to realise that, co-op or not, there’s really nothing else quite like Split Fiction in games today.