Hands on with It Takes Two

Games that co-op at their core are few and far between, sure there are countless games that offer the option to play with a friend, but that is always the same story. Hazelight have built their games around the idea that co-op is the core of the game and they did very well with their first title, A Way Out, but now they are back with It Takes Two and Electronic Arts were kind enough to provide some early access to the game and what a hoot.

Hazelight and EA released a trailer last week that talks up the constantly changing game mechanics the game is offering, something that is not just hyperbole. When I and one of the other guys on the Maxi-Geek team loaded into the game, we got to start at the beginning and after almost 3 hours, realised that we were having a blast. The story that is being told is that you and your friend of choice are May and Cody, a couple who have decided that their marriage is no longer working and as such they are divorcing, but while they have chosen to do that, their daughter has other plans. Using two dolls she has made, she makes a wish using a book about love and the parents are whammied into the dolls and told by the now sentient book, that in order to become human again, they have to fix their relationship.

What I liked about the game was that, yes as promised there was a lot of variety, from platforming to puzzles, shooting segments and even a flying portion, the game kept pushing new things forward, it was great. Hopefully by now you understand that the game is all about working together and while the early portions of the game maybe not show that, you only get a few minutes of solo discovery, before the game forces you to work together. This was done by May being given a hammer without a handle, while Cody was given control over a mystical nail and in order to make it through the massive challenge that lay ahead, you had to work together. For my time with the game, I was Cody, which meant I could throw the nail, sometimes it was a simple as throwing it into hole to hold a platform in place, allowing us to proceed, other times there was teamwork required. In order to push forward, I would have to throw nails into wood, in order to make a bar that May could swing from, using the hammerhead that she was given. I freely admit that it was here, when I kept recalling the nail when my friend jumped, laughing to myself the entire time, though I did eventually leave it there and we moved on.

The next big section, after a boss fight that kinda sucked, was the squirrel section and this of course changed everything up, well more like exploded everything. Here May and Cody were provided with weapons, I say weapons, but again, it was more like two halves of one, Cody could laydown a lot of sap, that could weigh down objects and when hit with a match from May’s match gun, would explode and cause a lot of destruction. While the pair are making their way around, they agree to help the squirrels in their fight against the wasps that Cody let grow inside the tree, which again brings things back to collaboration. Some of the puzzles are pretty straight forward, but some can be tricky, like needing to lay down a path of sap, in order to create a chain reaction explosion and while the game did a good job of providing hints, it never felt like they were trying to smack you in the face with them.

From there the game threw us down a massive slide and into a river rafting section, and then ended with us riding on giant glowing fish that flew, yeah I don’t know what happened there. After that, a boss fight and an escape and our time came to an end, but strangely we both had the same reaction, we wanted it to keep going and this was after 3 hours. The constantly shifting of gameplay genres kept things fresh, but the humour was also delightful, basically I want more now. While the shifting split screen does take a bit of getting used to, it wasn’t as challenging as I thought it might be, though if there was an option to disable it, that would be awesome.

Basically, if you want to play a co-op game, this is the one for you, it is not dark like A Way Out was, it is not challenging, at least not to challenging, like many other games that offer co-op, but most importantly, it was fun. Now the countdown on until I can play the game again.