Rating of
4.5/5
Couples’ Therapy Was Never So Enjoyable
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 11/08/24
“It Takes Two” is the second fundamentally cooperative game developed and released by Stockholm, Sweden-based Indie developer, Hazelight. The studio got its start in 2014 when the director and creative team from Starbreeze Games (also based in Stockholm) left their old studio to create a new one that would focus exclusively on 2-player cooperative experiences after the successful release of “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons” proved that there was an underserved market clamoring for such experiences.
I thoroughly enjoyed “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons” when I played it nearly a decade ago, even though I played through it by myself. This time around, with “It Takes Two” generating enough buzz to earn a coveted spot on the MeltedJoystick Games of the Year list for 2021. I bought a copy with the intention – this time – of playing through the game with a couch-coop partner instead of by myself. Chris was excited to play the game as well, so we set out to experience it together. Unfortunately, our initial motivation and momentum to get together in person may have started somewhat strong, but ultimately wavered and waned due to outside influences and chaotic upheavals in both of our lives. Thus our first two sessions were only a week apart… then the third session came a month later… and the final session in which we completed the game came an insane 6 months after that.
In spite of our inability to schedule sessions, we thoroughly enjoyed “It Takes Two,” and the gaps in our collective experience only served to amplify the game’s accessibility, easy of pick-up-and-play, and memorability of its plot.
Presentation
“It Takes Two” was built in the Unreal Engine, and published by Electronic Arts, so it was never an Epic Store Exclusive on PC. The visuals are generally quite beautiful and well-designed during actual gameplay, which takes place within a fantastical, whimsical dream world. Cutscenes that take place in the “real world,” on the other hand, tend to have nice looking environments, but human characters who dwell in the uncanny valley. The little girl at the center of the narrative, Rose, is particularly disturbing, looking a bit like Gollum from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth Fantasy setting dallying in a bit of drag.
Audio is well-done across the board. The game features a pleasant (but not particularly memorable) soundtrack, and is fully voiced. The voiceacting team consists of a range of veteran voice actors as well as mid-tier regular actors who bring a definite feel of professionalism to the game, elevating it far above the horrendous videogame dubs of yesteryear, while simultaneously keeping the budget tamped down enough to thread the needle between being an Indie Game project and an Industrial Game project backed by the wealth and bureaucracy of Electronic Arts.
Technically, “It Takes Two” is reasonably solid, and it became more stable after Electronic Arts allowed Hazelight to remove the mandatory Origin Launcher from non-Origin versions of the game purchased from places like, say, Steam. Chris and I only experienced minor technical weirdness. One time, my dog accidentally unplugged Chris’ Xbox controller, which transferred his character controls to the keyboard… and wouldn’t let us reassign them back to the controller after I plugged it in again. We had one random crash during a boss fight that we had to repeat… but there was a mid-fight checkpoint that meant we lost very little progress. Lastly, we had one random experience where puzzle became impossible to solve because one of the objects involved failed to spawn into the environment. In every case of technical weirdness, simply restarting the game resolved the issue.
Story
“It Takes Two” tells the tale of a couple living in England who are on the verge of a divorce. Cody is an American, a free spirit, a stay-at-home dad, and a would-be gardener who is married to May, a British engineer with a deeply analytical mind, who serves as the family’s sole bread-winner. In between them is their elementary-school-aged daughter, Rose, who can’t seem to understand why her parents don’t like each other anymore, and who resolves to fix everything.
One day at school, Rose finds an old self-help book by one Dr. Hakkim, simply entitled “The Book of Love.” She brings this tome home with her after fishing it out of the trash, intent on the idea that if her parents read it, they’ll love each other again and stop arguing. Her pleas fall on deaf ears, as Cody and May are far too busy focusing on their own grievances with each other to listen to their daughter, leaving Rose to weep quietly in her room.
However, the power of Rose’s emotions interact with “The Book of Love” in strange and mysterious ways, casting her parents into a magical slumber, where their minds inhabit hand-made dolls that Rose created in their images. Thus, shrunk to tiny size and cast into a bizarre version of reality, Cody and May find themselves at the mercy of the now-anthropomorphized Book of Love, who goes by his author’s name (and sounds like Cheech Marin) who will force them to confront the problems in their relationship and their lives in general through overcoming obstacles through metaphorical dream-worlds that combine the couple’s shrunken scale with a variety of emotional baggage.
The result is a narrative filled with twists, turns, and unpredictable next-steps that still ultimately feels predictable, simply because it’s the type of story that simply shouldn’t end on a sad or bitter note. Still, it’s filled with wildly creative characters, quirky scenarios, and enough excellent writing to make it memorable, and more poignant than sappy.
“It Takes Two” isn’t a particularly long game, clocking in at almost exactly 12 hours. Achievement hunters can look to log more time (or follow a guide and spoil all of the surprises).
Gameplay
Unlike “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons,” which I had difficulty classifying into a neat genre box, “It Takes Two” if definitively and with no uncertainty a 3D Platformer at its heart. Cody and May both run around in fully 3D environments filled with jumping puzzles, grappling hook swinging, rail grinding, and other well-established mechanics within the genre. What makes it stand out, however, is that, outside of these basic core abilities, May can do vastly different things than Cody… and what exactly those ‘things’ are changes with each and every stage and new scenario that confronts the pair.
Even though it is a fairly by-the-books 3D Platformer at its core, “It Takes Two” never gets stale or repetitive, simply because the secondary layer of mechanics tied to the characters never stays the same for long enough. In one mission, Cody can spray plastic explosives onto surfaces, while May controls the igniter. In a vehicular section, one character controls sideways movement and the other controls vertical. As a result of each character having half of their functional skill kit, cooperation is baked into every stage, every boss fight, and every obstacle at a fundamental level. Getting from Point A to Point B typically involves mildly varied routes for the two, with each dependent on the other to help them navigate the paths.
Unlike some games, “It Takes Two” isn’t fixated on killing the characters or punishing players for screwing up. Both Cody and May have unlimited lives, and as long as one of them is still standing, the other can quickly re-spawn and get back into the action. If both characters die simultaneously – such as during a particularly nasty boss fight – they will simply reload to an auto-saved checkpoint, which are forgiving in their placement and frequency.
In general, I loved the moment-to-moment gameplay in “It Takes Two.” The platforming is fun, the wildly varying mechanics in each subsequent stage, and the excellent puzzle designs make the entire experience a treat… well… almost the entire experience. Dotted throughout the game are a number of incredibly annoying mini-games in which the two characters/players no longer cooperate, but rather, compete. These are the type of arbitrary guff that could cause a couple whose relationship is on the skids to completely revert to hating each other again.
Overall
“It Takes Two” is another brilliant, and even more polished, cooperative gaming endeavor from the same Swedish minds who brought us “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.” Aside from the MJ Crew’s personal scheduling difficulties, this is the type of cooperative design we love to see, and would have appreciated even more length, depth, and creativity from the experience.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4.5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
