The next two players at Hazelight Studios have already been officially launched. It Takes Two puts you and your friend on a split-screen adventure to help potential divorcees Cody and May learn to work together again as tiny versions of Honey I Shrunk My Spouse. Better yet, it seems that Hazelight successfully mediated the marriage between all the many types of character skills that they released together this time. Knowing this, I am ready to call my usual friend to resolve this.
After playing Hazelight’s last co-op ‘A Way Out earlier this year, I was feeling cautiously optimistic about It Takes Two. I had a decent time with A Way Out, but your transition from stealth puzzles to car chases to third-person shooting was not terribly easy. Game director Josef Fares put a lot of emphasis before the release of It Takes Two on how each area has you and your friend dealing with an entirely different set of tasks, which worried me that it would be an equally rough journey. Alice Bee’s review, It Takes Two, offers some welcome guarantees on this topic.
“You and your partner will have different skills at each level, so there is a sense of anticipation when you reach a new area,” she says. “The constant changes in style, skill and even camera angles – with levels referencing RPGs from top to bottom, beat ’em ups and Mario Kart – are not disorienting, and none of them end up feeling underdeveloped.” She says that some are more fun than others, but they all have interesting uses for solving puzzles and really require the cooperation of both players.
The story is somewhat conventional, though, apparently. Two parents learn to work together again for their child’s sake, instead of getting divorced. No big surprise at that. When I played A Way Out with my co-worker, I clearly remember anticipating one of the dramatic climax lines in the main character’s story literally because it was predictable. I’m expecting the same from It Takes Two, but if we get a good laugh from him again, I won’t call it a huge loss. It Takes Two looks like it’s going to be mushy and funny on purpose, at least.
Leaving aside my biggest reservations about It Takes Two, I think I know what I’m going to do this weekend.
It Takes Two is now available on Steam and Origin for £ 35 / € 40 / $ 40. As with the last co-op ’em up, only you or your friend need to have the game to play together.