It Takes Two is by the creators of A Way Out. I haven’t played that game but this is similar in the sense that it is split-screen co-op with some asymmetric gameplay ideas. You can play local or online co-op, and with the “friend pass” only one of you needs to own the game. It is split screen so you can always see what your partner is doing which is vital to help each other navigate the environment and puzzles.
Married couple May and Cody inform their child, Rose they are about to divorce. Rose has found a “Book of Love”, and somehow, her tears falling on some dolls transfers her parents' souls into the dolls. Cody is made of clay and May is made of wood.
Their situation is explained by the Book of Love, Dr Hakim. The book has a face with a mustache, and arms and legs. He seems quite seedy and often pelvic thrusts. He speaks in a strong Mexican accent, accompanied by flamenco guitar strumming. It’s possibly a bit on the racist side. He is definitely a jarring/cringeworthy character.
Dr Hakim gives you tasks, sometimes transports you to the next area, and gives you new abilities for that area. He is always emphasising how necessary teamwork is, and his tasks are trying to help Cody and May repair their relationship, even though they have no intention of doing so. They just want to return to human form.
The tone in general can be inconsistent. There’s a pretty shocking section where Cody and May rip apart their daughter's favourite toy. Then there’s a section of dialogue where Dr Hakim swears. Both these aspects took me by surprise.
I assumed the game was aimed at a parent playing with their child. I played it with a friend and we are both in our early 30’s. We really loved the gameplay but didn’t enjoy the story so much. We felt nostalgic for the idea and dialogue between the main characters. The dialogue from the child and book seemed very odd though. The overall story and dialogue style seems very 90’s. It reminded me of films like “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and “Jumanji”.
The story was obviously going to go down the route of the parents rekindling their friendship after all this teamwork. It’s probably a bit of a weird message to give to children. Also, it didn’t even seem that believable that their relationship was salvageable. They constantly argue and it doesn’t really seem like they are solving their issues. May doesn’t seem that likable as a person, but I did like her character. She just constantly shoots Cody down and nags and moans at him. There’s some moments where they’re reminded of why they liked each other: like their holiday where Cody proposed, and the final sections where Cody is told to restart his gardening project and May should start singing again.
The story isn’t the reason why you play the game though, and I have to say, the gameplay is extremely impressive. The game design is actually really good, the puzzle variety is very high, and it is long for a co-op game at around 11 hours.
To navigate the areas, there’s a fair bit of platforming and puzzles to solve to get to the next section. Some sections are for the visual flair, so you may just run down a long section (could be a chase sequence, or just an interesting environment), some rope-swinging sections, and there’s sections where you are grinding a rail and have to jump to the next rail at the appropriate time.
At first, it seems that they are navigating real environments like a shed, garden and treehouse, but then sometimes goes down the imagination route.
The shed level was one of my favourites. May has a hammer and Cody has a few nails which he can recall like Thor’s hammer. Cody gets to pin moving platforms, or create areas that May can swing off with her hammer.
There’s one level where it plays like an isometric hack and slash and each character has different magic and abilities.
The combat can be quite tough especially in the boss battles e.g. dodging an insane amount of moving lasers. There’s plenty of ideas, so you will have fights against the likes of a Vacuum Cleaner, a mechanical bee, and Rose’s toy; Moon Baboon.
If you die, you respawn. In combat, you have to repeatedly press a button to respawn. If you both die, then you fail but you never lose much progress at all.
Since you both have different abilities, you often get different tasks to navigate through the level. There's plenty of sections where only one of you can cross a section, then will have to find something to interact with for the other person to get across. Plenty of these moments require teamwork, so one player has to be helped across before they can then help the other.
Some of the moments reminded me of playing Trine. Sometimes the fun comes from all the times you mess up: either when you just affect yourself, or affecting your partner. The respawn feature means it never gets frustrating. You just laugh and have another attempt a few seconds later.
There’s also moments where maybe you don’t understand how to solve a puzzle but your partner will. So they will have to guide you through the solution. These moments are what makes co-op games like this really fun.
The graphics are great, with bold colours and good detail in the environments. The characters are well animated and have very dramatic running animations. The sound design is really good too.
Some parts of the levels have interactive objects with no impact on the level. These can be simple things like launching rockets, playing musical instruments, stealing a hat from a character, or having a snowball fight on the winter themed level. Some players may just ignore these completely, but I think they are a nice addition because it adds more personality/charm to the environments.
There’s some dedicated mini-games where you play against each other. These can be rhythm games, shooting galleries, whack-a-mole, ice skate races etc. They are a bit mixed in quality, but again, they are nice distractions that add a bit more variety and personality to the game.
Like I said before, my friend and I didn’t care for the story set-up, but we thought the environments and gameplay ideas were excellent, and the game is definitely deserving of the high praise it seemed to receive from critics. It’s very creative and full of great ideas. I’m not sure who the game is actually targeting; it’s very confused in that regard.