Exalted by incredible visuals, platinum platforming, lovable characters, and an atmosphere swathed in nostalgia, limerence, and optimism through melancholy that feels joyful but not saccharine, It Takes Two is an emotional theme park and one of the greatest co-op games ever created.
Josef Fares has been one of my favorite names in gaming after I had my whole month ruined by playing Brothers, and I was really excited for this one after my sister and I played through A Way Out a few months ago, which was very good but lacked a ton of meaningful gameplay where it felt more like an on-rails thriller roller coaster. With this new game, I think we have what worked the best about both Brothers and A Way Out cranked up to 11. Like Brothers, but unlike A Way Out, the story has taken more of a backseat compared to the gameplay which is mostly great platforming with the occasional puzzle, but it’s still enough to be compelling you through the game and able to forge some fantastic and unforgettable characters. It takes the pretty heavy topic of divorce and approaches it with a childlike whimsicality that bears witness to some amazing visuals throughout. The game’s art style and settings were never short of great, but the entirety of Rose’s room, namely in the outer space level and the ball pit was just absolutely unbelievable, especially with its attention to detail. Just like Brothers and A Way Out, one of the best parts of the game is looking around and appreciating the world that the characters live in, interacting with all the side content and other people’s lives. The game is especially very anachronistic about all the toys you find lying around, with stuff I grew up playing with as a kid in the 2000s, paired with shit like abacuses and fidget spinners, two wildly different toys for two wildly different generations. The character designs for the two main characters is also incredible and somehow finds their place among the platforming greats. I also enjoyed picking apart all the cool details in the final level as a musician. The music was also definitely worth mentioning even though the game seemed to musically really pick up in the last few levels, especially in the Snow Globe level, which had me commenting out loud several times about how good it was. There is such a grand scale to this game even though it technically never leaves their house up until the ending, portraying the home life and history of its two protagonists and their daughter as this larger-than-life lore that only makes sense as a child, which I love.
The mechanics in the game are always switching so gameplay never becomes stale, in how the game is always giving its two protagonists, Cody and May, different abilities to blaze through the levels but this doesn’t always work to the game’s credits, whereas some mechanics do feel like they hit their ceiling rather quickly, whereas others feel like they don’t scratch the surface of what’s possible. Still, all of them are quite fun and offer chances for both players to both take control and work in tandem with co-llab-o-ra-tion. Some of these change up the game more than others, one which just turns the game into 15 minutes of a tribute to Diablo with Cody and May becoming a sorcerer and paladin in a dungeon crawling romp. The minigames are also really good for the most part, giving you and your co-op partner a chance to compete against each other as a foil to the collaborative gameplay you find yourself in. Some of these minigames are just very simple games that already existed, like chess, volleyball, and tug-of-war, but are still lots of fun, especially for seeing how Cody and May interact with each other while this is going on. Some of these minigames are also admittedly kinda bad, but there’s still a ton that offer up interesting ideas that were super fun to just keep running through again and again. Also, after playing two aged cheese spoiled milk-ass Lego games with mediocre movement and even worse camera placement, it was like a refreshing breeze to play a game where both movement and camera placement as well as meaningful split-screen both felt fantastic.
Josef Fares has been one of my favorite names in gaming after I had my whole month ruined by playing Brothers, and I was really excited for this one after my sister and I played through A Way Out a few months ago, which was very good but lacked a ton of meaningful gameplay where it felt more like an on-rails thriller roller coaster. With this new game, I think we have what worked the best about both Brothers and A Way Out cranked up to 11. Like Brothers, but unlike A Way Out, the story has taken more of a backseat compared to the gameplay which is mostly great platforming with the occasional puzzle, but it’s still enough to be compelling you through the game and able to forge some fantastic and unforgettable characters. It takes the pretty heavy topic of divorce and approaches it with a childlike whimsicality that bears witness to some amazing visuals throughout. The game’s art style and settings were never short of great, but the entirety of Rose’s room, namely in the outer space level and the ball pit was just absolutely unbelievable, especially with its attention to detail. Just like Brothers and A Way Out, one of the best parts of the game is looking around and appreciating the world that the characters live in, interacting with all the side content and other people’s lives. The game is especially very anachronistic about all the toys you find lying around, with stuff I grew up playing with as a kid in the 2000s, paired with shit like abacuses and fidget spinners, two wildly different toys for two wildly different generations. The character designs for the two main characters is also incredible and somehow finds their place among the platforming greats. I also enjoyed picking apart all the cool details in the final level as a musician. The music was also definitely worth mentioning even though the game seemed to musically really pick up in the last few levels, especially in the Snow Globe level, which had me commenting out loud several times about how good it was. There is such a grand scale to this game even though it technically never leaves their house up until the ending, portraying the home life and history of its two protagonists and their daughter as this larger-than-life lore that only makes sense as a child, which I love.
The mechanics in the game are always switching so gameplay never becomes stale, in how the game is always giving its two protagonists, Cody and May, different abilities to blaze through the levels but this doesn’t always work to the game’s credits, whereas some mechanics do feel like they hit their ceiling rather quickly, whereas others feel like they don’t scratch the surface of what’s possible. Still, all of them are quite fun and offer chances for both players to both take control and work in tandem with co-llab-o-ra-tion. Some of these change up the game more than others, one which just turns the game into 15 minutes of a tribute to Diablo with Cody and May becoming a sorcerer and paladin in a dungeon crawling romp. The minigames are also really good for the most part, giving you and your co-op partner a chance to compete against each other as a foil to the collaborative gameplay you find yourself in. Some of these minigames are just very simple games that already existed, like chess, volleyball, and tug-of-war, but are still lots of fun, especially for seeing how Cody and May interact with each other while this is going on. Some of these minigames are also admittedly kinda bad, but there’s still a ton that offer up interesting ideas that were super fun to just keep running through again and again. Also, after playing two aged cheese spoiled milk-ass Lego games with mediocre movement and even worse camera placement, it was like a refreshing breeze to play a game where both movement and camera placement as well as meaningful split-screen both felt fantastic.