Hazelight Studios received other nominations for its co-op adventure before ultimately beating out the likes of Metroid Dread, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Psychonauts 2 for Game of the Year. As a proof of concept that co-op-only works, it turns out that Hazelight Studios were right all along.Those who missed out on The Game Awards' Game of the Year, It Takes Two, can now purchase it for 50% off at major retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, and GameStop. It works beautifully not just because of its ingenuity but because having a friend present through the shared experience becomes a continual catalyst for entertainment. Playing It Takes Two feels like an unending fairground ride of bright colours, crazy characters, and elegantly engineered co-op challenges, with some very clever level design and moments of hilarity and friendly rivalry.
With brief, mostly straightforward mechanics it’s not normally too fun-destroying but could easily have been avoided.
If you’re playing locally on a PlayStation 5 and you don’t have any other games you want to play, it’s not so bad, but if you have to reload the game it defaults to its last auto-save, which can sometimes be a lot further back than you might anticipate. It Takes Two is not unblemished, with perhaps its worst solecism being a lack of save points. JRPG remake avalanche: Final Fantasy 10, Star Ocean 2 and Persona 3 all leak It makes for an uproarious good time that absolutely needs conversation, not just for the sake of timing, but also for playful taunting. Moments of real challenge are bookended by hilarity and foolishness, some scripted but much of it emergent, both intended and very much not. Mechanics are used, explored, and then rapidly discarded before hopping you onto a plunging rollercoaster ride to the next level, but everywhere you go there’s fun and silliness. That turns out to be the true magic of It Takes Two. Depending on your relationship with player two, any one of these is a good time for trickery and general fooling around. There are plenty of moments where trust and timing are essential, as one player pops out platforms for the other to hop onto, a second’s hesitation or mistakenly hitting the wrong platform means the other’s instant demise. Rather than settle for parity between the two dolls, many of the mechanics are asymmetrical, with each parent having a different job to do in order to win the day. The more frequent collaborative sections are just as involving. It Takes Two – it can get pretty meta (pic: EA) Meanwhile the hammer can thwack special buttons, shatter obstacles, and if you like, pound the other doll into the ground. From those two simple tools, dozens of brilliantly engineered challenges flow, with the nail used as a fulcrum to swing across wide gaps, or to hold portals open while the plucky dolls dash to the other side. In one, your miniature heroes are armed with a claw hammer and a throwable nail. That goes for the bosses too, which reinvent everyday objects as titanic baddies to be dispatched in imaginatively cooperative ways.Įach area you encounter adds its own mechanics. Whether it’s fighting heavily militarised squirrels and their enemies, the wasps, in a sprawling hollow tree, or playing through space levels with their occasional zero-G and size-changing mechanics, everything is made more exciting than the real world alone would allow. Seeing everything from a mouse-like perspective lends each realm a Brobdingnagian feel that’s enhanced by the wonderfully detailed environments, each of which has been amped up into a fantastical setting. Picking a parent-doll each, players leap straight into the action, which takes place in various rooms and areas around the family’s house and garden.
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