I went in nearly fully blind to my assembly with Josef “F*ck the Oscars!” Fares to play his new sport, Split Fiction. I knew the title, and I knew that it was, to nobody’s shock, one other co-op sport, as has grow to be his calling card after Brothers: A Story of Two Sons, A Approach Out, and It Takes Two. That’s it. So when he fired up the construct, put one of many controllers in my hand, and we began to play it collectively, I used to be in all probability as stunned as you had been whenever you watched the reveal trailer at The Game Awards. It’s completely nothing like his earlier video games – thematically and most undoubtedly visually – and it’s clear that with every new sport, Fares and his workforce at Hazelight are giving gamers an increasing number of company over what’s taking place on the display.
Should you haven’t seen the reveal trailer but – narrated by Fares – please cease studying and watch that beneath proper now. It’ll give an awesome overview of what I’ll briefly discuss (I say briefly as a result of Fares jumped us everywhere in the sport – even to the final degree! – to point out off a bunch of various issues Split Fiction is doing, and I don’t wish to spoil something particular. Nicely, besides the flying farting pigs half. That was within the trailer and I undoubtedly wish to discuss that.). To recap, Split Fiction is a sci-fi, future-set sport through which aspiring writers Mio and Zoe – named, Fares tells me, after his two daughters – go to Rader Publishing, an organization that may deliver a author’s story to life in a kind of Star Trek holodeck type of approach. The ladies don’t know one another, and thru a tech glitch suffered on account of the writer attempting to steal their concepts, their tales find yourself actually overlapping one another. Meaning Zoe will get thrown into Mio’s darkish and gritty sci-fi world, and the pair are involuntarily thrown backwards and forwards between that place and Zoe’s spells-and-sorcery woodland fantasy realm.
It’s a pitch-perfect premise, permitting for all types of gameplay, like wielding laser swords, anti-gravity boots, fireball spells, and driving on dragonback – amongst many, many others. I attempted out an entire bunch of eventualities as Fares jumped us round from degree to degree. A few issues had been instantly clear: one, Hazelight has upped its sport within the graphics division. Even forgiving It Takes Two’s stylized cartoonish visuals, Split Fiction appears generationally higher than the studio’s final mission. It’s not Hellblade 2 by any stretch, but it surely appears like a correct current-gen AAA sport now. And two, you’re taking part in a correct third-person action-adventure sport now, with full digicam management, platforming, fight, and extra. You’ll nonetheless do a justifiable share of button mashing and timed presses for numerous co-op interactions, however you’re in additional full and direct management of what Mio and Zoe are as much as than you ever had been with Cody and Could. Each of those are superb issues!
As you trip between sci-fi ranges and fantasy ranges, the sport worlds fully change, as does the gameplay. Additional mixing issues up in an effort to maintain the co-op marketing campaign recent are numerous non-obligatory side-story missions, and that’s the place issues actually get bizarre. I performed a bunch of them, together with the rolling-ball-turned-armor-suit situation and the completely hilarious stage the place you fly round as pigs propelled by your personal farts. I additionally bought to be an enormous fantasy gorilla, do methods on a hoverboard down a course like a sci-fi SSX, leap previous and later journey a hungry sand shark, and extra. Fares stated he actually desires gamers to expertise these, and in the event that they’re all as enjoyable and off-the-wall as those I sampled, then I don’t assume he has to fret as a result of people are going to have loads of motivation to search out the subsequent loopy non-obligatory mission.