It Takes Two Review

The discipline here is extraordinary. Most studios would find one good asymmetric idea, a nail gun and a hammer, say, and stretch it across ten hours. Hazelight uses it for a chapter and throws it away, then does that again with magnetism, time manipulation, gravity boots, a sled, a flight sim, a fighting game parody. Nothing repeats, which means the difficulty curve is really a novelty curve, and it works because each toy is genuinely tuned rather than sketched.

Split-screen is mandatory and correct, because seeing your partner fail is half the comedy. The problem is the script. May and Cody's marital collapse is played for slapstick with a talking self-help book as narrator, and the emotional beats it wants to earn are undercut by dialogue that condescends to both characters and the elephant sequence that nobody has forgiven. Play it muted with a friend and it is one of the finest cooperative designs ever assembled.