After profitable the Recreation of the 12 months gong for It Takes Two on the The Recreation Awards 2021 I’m sure that developer Hazelight Studios was positively brimming with concepts of what to do subsequent. I’m sure of this as a result of the crew seems to have used each a type of concepts in Split Fiction. A fascinating and assured two-person journey like no different, Split Fiction is continuous, co-op satisfaction that had me smiling constantly as we progressed, parkoured, and pulverised our method via to probably the greatest finales I’ve ever performed. Is it a puzzle platformer? Is it a third-person motion journey? Is it an excessive sports activities sport, or a side-scroller, or a twin-stick shooter?
The reply is sure.
Split Fiction is the story of two younger and unsuccessful authors, Zoe and Mio, lured to a mysterious tech firm by the prospect of lastly being revealed. What they didn’t depend on, nevertheless, was having their brains strip mined of each story they’ve ever conceived. When a scuffle involving a suspicious Mio thrusts her into Zoe’s private occasion inside the pc system, the 2 discover themselves compelled to work collectively to flee and foil the corporate’s plot. Zoe and Mio are shortly and successfully established as polar opposites in all the pieces from their attitudes to their accents, however Split Fiction wastes little time tossing them collectively.
It’s an easy-to-grasp premise, and it’s virtually baffling that it hasn’t come alongside in a dozen video games already. That’s, the concept of being trapped in an interactive, digital world is a trope that’s been remixed repeatedly in movie for many years. In fact, Split Fiction nonetheless arrives in 2025 as a very well timed takedown of our grim way forward for being drenched in AI slop towards our will. The truth that, at its coronary heart, Split Fiction is 2 proud center fingers to the conga line of entitled tech bros who’ve determined artwork is a commodity that may be scraped, stolen, and repackaged by their plagiarism engines solely provides to its allure.
Non-friction
As with It Takes Two earlier than it, Split Fiction’s platforming is instantly on level. With a bounce, double-jump, and air sprint at every character’s disposal, Split Fiction boasts the identical excessive diploma of aerial maneuverability as its predecessor. Wall runs may be spectacularly chained, grappling hooks are thrilling swings or slingshots, and rails, poles, and tiny touchdown spots have a mushy lock that pulls Zoe and Mio onto them – as long as you’ve pointed them largely in the precise path.
The upshot is a motion system that’s extraordinarily approachable and straightforward to grow to be adept with fairly quick, and one which focuses on momentum and timing quite than getting too slowed down punishing tiny errors or a scarcity of expert-level finesse. It’s like having only one bumper up in a bowling alley; it’s pleased to present you a slight nudge in the precise path from time to time, nevertheless it’s not going to render you immune from making errors completely.
My solely actual criticism of the platforming is that there are a number of events the place it turns into tough to catch up after falling behind your companion, as one participant hurtles forward and the opposite will get caught in a short loop of dying and respawning making an attempt to get again on monitor. It’s additionally a minor bugbear having each Zoe and Mio merely clipping via one another each time they occupy the identical house, because it leads to a surprisingly unfinished look. Make no mistake, having one character grow to be an precise impediment for the opposite would completely destroy the snappy tempo of Split Fiction, however it could’ve regarded so a lot better (and nonetheless made good sense) with some type of digitised impact breaking apart Zoe and Mio’s avatars each time they discovered themselves perched on the identical tiny platform.
At any price, Split Fiction’s fast-paced platforming is ideal for its solely co-op strategy, significantly when performed by folks of differing talent ranges, because it’s principally frictionless. Die exterior of a boss battle and also you’ll quickly respawn close to your companion robotically. Die inside a boss battle and you may re-enter the fray after some temporary button mashing. Checkpoints are generously frequent, even throughout boss fights. Chip their well being all the way down to midway and also you received’t have to repeat an encounter completely, even when each Zoe and Mio are defeated on the similar time. That is welcome as a result of, as extremely imaginative as the numerous bosses are, it’s commonplace to undergo a few low-cost deaths through the fights – generally after getting respawned underneath a salvo of lethal assaults that wipe you out the moment you blink again into existence. As such they have been solely ever temporary setbacks, and we by no means needed to repeat something to the diploma it felt like a chore.
General it’s not a very tough sport for, say, two dads with someplace within the neighborhood 80 years of online game literacy between them, however I don’t crave punishing problem and by no means have. For me Split Fiction soars due to its satisfying give attention to communication, collaboration, and fixed selection. It’s determining the trail and the enjoyment of suggesting the precise puzzle resolution. It’s laughing at premature misunderstandings understanding the penalty for failure is rarely particularly extreme. It’s deciding whether or not to go on three, or if it’s one, two, three, GO! Split Fiction is nothing if not a sport that makes you realize what it could really feel like to wish your finest pal to pull you off your booby-trapped rest room earlier than it explodes. You’ve all seen Deadly Weapon 2, proper? I did point out we’re a pair of 40-year-old dads, yeah?
Watching two of my children play after I’ve completed it I’ve since seen a few doable bottlenecks (associated to timing their well past a lethal impediment) but when much less skilled gamers have nobody round to swoop in and save the day, the choice to easily skip ahead to the following checkpoint is accessible as a final resort. Split Fiction doesn’t wish to stall anybody indefinitely. It needs to be performed.
Intelligent, bending story
Split Fiction is so good at eager to be performed it’s laborious to cease enjoying. It merely doesn’t keep the identical lengthy sufficient for it to ever grow to be boring. In case you’ve ever puzzled whether or not it could be doable to squeeze SSX and Shadow of the Colossus into the identical story, marvel no extra. Split Fiction discovered a method.
Zoe and Mio are fantasy and sci-fi authors respectively, and the motion is basically divided equally between the 2 genres, however the fantasy and sci-fi branches of Split Fiction are something however static. That’s, the story doesn’t pendulum between a single sci-fi world and a single fantasy world repeatedly for 14-hours – the degrees are at all times completely different, every with their very own particular hooks. Mio’s psychological archive of sci-fi concepts vary from a neon-splashed, futuristic metropolis stuffed with flying site visitors – with gravity-defying cyber ninjas that may have you ever and a companion serving to one another down a high-altitude freeway whereas working on completely completely different axes – to an area advanced subsequent to a dying star releasing pulsing blasts that may disintegrate Zoe and Mio in the event that they’re caught out of canopy. That’s simply two, and I’m extraordinarily hesitant to drill down on any extra. Not understanding how every new degree and facet story will shake up the backdrop and the gameplay is a big a part of what makes Split Fiction such large enjoyable to scoot via.
Zoe’s fantasy worlds are initially a bit twee by comparability, and customarily had me wanting ahead to the brief sci-fi diversions which can be scattered all through, however they do characteristic the higher boss battles (I’m reluctant to spoil the specifics of any of these both however, broadly talking, the fantasy bosses are extra spectacular in measurement and have personalities than make them vastly extra memorable). The fantasy portion does peak later within the story because it turns into somewhat darker and extra grand-scale, which is an effective springboard for the prolonged and meticulously engineered ultimate degree. It’s not simply essentially the most impressively executed stretch of Split Fiction total; it’s one of the crucial memorable finales I’ve ever performed. Split Fiction is a fine-looking sport all through, however the spectacle of your complete ending phase is an actual visible victory for Hazelight.