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.
Split Fiction reviewDeveloper: Hazelight StudiosPublisher: EAPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out on 6th March on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, EA App), PS5 and Xbox Series X/S
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 – 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 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.