Do I leave the bridge up for him to cross safely or do I drop it and kill him? Do I drop the platform so I spinning blade does not chop him in half or do I watch him die and laugh like Ezma? You never know what the game will throw at you and whether or not you’ll take advantage of the death your partner will never see coming. Of course, there’s always the opportunity to kill your partner and when these moments popped up, I was in stitches from laughter. Hazelight Studios has taken common everyday household items and merged their actions into puzzles and in-game mechanics.

This is where It Takes Two shines the most. We also had to control the airflow by riding the hose to lift it or drop it down. It relied on me telling him which one to activate and timing my jumps and swings to avoid my death.īeyond the tools, the first chapter also delivered some great mechanics that all tied to a vacuum cleaner and sucking and blowing air to either propel the dolls across gaps or toss bombs at a boss. The puzzle mechanics then got a bit tougher as Cody got three nails and had to juggle pulling them out while throwing new ones to lift platforms against a wall and get me safely to the top. My brother, Cody would toss the nail into a wall and I would use the hammer head to attach to it and swing my away to the other side. The two tools were vital to overcoming the challenges that the level threw at us. Cody, on the other hand, got a set of nails he could toss across great distances and stick into wood. I could smash glass bottles, switches and even run around squashing Cody over and over again. I got a head of a hammer which I put on my back and used to slam down on objects. Later in the chapter, we got our first set of tools. Running, sliding, jumping, sprinting and bashing down onto switches to activate doors and platforms. This chapter relied on introducing us to the general mechanics of the game. In the first chapter, I played as May and my bro as Cody. Without a strong cast of characters, It Takes Two would have been just a great platformer so the combination of both makes it so great. Often his dialogue made me chuckle as he lacks even the basic knowledge about a subject but tries to pretend he is wise. May is a pretentious wife who is sick and tired of Cody’s laziness and Cody is well, not the sharpest tool in the shed. The first chapter familiarized us with the game and characters. As I mentioned before, the special early access demo I played of It Takes Two consisted of two chapters. This not only adds another level of replayability to the game but it also meant that every chapter has given Hazelight Studios the opportunity to deliver something completely fresh in terms of gameplay. This means you cannot pass off your tool to your co-op partner so the playthrough you have will be its own unique experience from start to finish. Each player takes on the role of either Cody or May and each character packs their own personality, jokes, and most important of all is entirely responsible for their own objectives in the game. By some crazy magic, the parent’s souls enter these dolls leaving their real bodies in a dormant state. She makes dolls and asks a very special book of love called Dr Hakim to help bring them back together. These two dolls are actually a mother and father that just announced their divorce to their daughter. It Takes Two follows the story of two dolls who have been brought to life through the magic of tears.

Instead, every chapter threw my brother and I into the deep end as we got new tools to use, enemies to fight, intense chase scenes to master and hilarious dialogue to back it all up. Often, within an hour or two of playing a game, we kinda know how it works and what is happening. I often sat back in complete awe with a massive grin on my face thinking about how challenging it must have been to deliver a game that offers up so much variety.

Not one puzzle is repeated and the sheer randomness of the game’s mechanics and gameplay makes it feel like watching a superb Pixar animation where there’s no budget or limit to its possibilities. Not one area in the game felt the same as the one I just completed.

But throughout my tw0-and-a-half hours with It Takes Two, its magic comes from how surprising its gameplay, story and dialogue is.

It takes two chapter list