The Outerhaven’s It Takes Two Review PS5

Sometimes all it takes is a little cooperation

I’m sure that most of you reading this are aware that couch co-op games are a bit of a rarity these days, with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One basically finding any excuse to not have couch co-op. In this time of lockdowns and social breakdown, a game such as It Takes Two is a nice breath of fresh air where I and my partner can just sit down for a few hours and enjoy some time together, that said, this game is messed up in ways that I feel like I’ll need a little bit of therapy for afterward. I never thought I’d ever be disturbed by a stuffed toy begging for its life as we drag it to its slow and painful death but that’s Hazelight Studios for you, fun at the cost of sanity.

Game Name: It Takes Two
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Publisher(s): Electronic Arts, EA Originals
Developer(s): Hazelight Studios
Release Date: March 26th 2021
Price: £34.99/ $39.99

If you’re familiar with Hazelight Studios from their previous games, A Way Out and Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons, you’ll know that they are a talented studio that takes the idea of a co-op game and make it the centerpiece of their story telling and gameplay design. They’re one of the few studios that I can think of that understands that a co-op game takes an entirely different design philosophy to pull off well. Where Brothers was the start of their path and A Way Out improved their original design philosophy, It Takes Two feels like the culmination of everything they’ve learned all poured into a great game that’s varied and imaginative enough to carry two people through to the end.

The story of It Takes Two features around the relationship of May and Cody and how they have grown apart over the years, which has ultimately lead to them to seek out a divorce. The start of the game shows our protagonists breaking the news to their young daughter, Rose, who takes the news as well as you could expect. Badly. She hides away in the shed and wishes that her parents could stay together, clutched in her hands are her handmade dolls that represent her mother and father. After a tear falls on both dolls while making the wish Cody and May awaken to find themselves trapped in the bodies of these dolls.

Confused as to what is happening, the couple is then intruded upon by a talking book by the name of Dr. Hakim, a relationship-therapy book that Rose apparently bought “at no small fee.” Dr. Hakim informs the couple that the only way out is to “fix” their relationship, but the two opt to ignore the magical book and decide to try and reach their daughter to break the spell. Along their journey, May and Cody learn the values of cooperation and rediscover their lost love, so far so Disney.

I’ve seen people describe It Takes Two as a great game to play with the family but to be honest, I’m not sure what the target audience of this game really is. It’s not really a family game because of the copious amounts of language and aforementioned brutal murders of stuffed animals to progress the plot, but the overall design and presentation of the game is along the lines of a very child-friendly dreamland world. Maybe that’s the point, to show the stark contrast between how a childlike world treats the matter of adult relationships while the “real” people now dragged into this world do not act or think like this kind of whimsy world expects. I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll see an ulterior motive behind It Takes Two’s story but I must admit I was too busy having fun to look.

 

It’s hard to outline the gameplay of It Takes Two as each level has it’s own set of tools to get the players through the level. One section will have you using a hammerhead and some nails for traversal, while the other will have you flying a plane made out of twigs and underwear while your partner plays Mortal Kombat against a squirrel on the wing of the same plane, trust me it makes sense in context. The only real gameplay tool that carries over from level to level is your basic movement skills which comprise of dashing, double jumping and small elements of traversal such as rail grinding, rope swinging and wall jumping that are more or less supporting elements rather than the meat of your gameplay.

Using your basic traversal tools and the level-based ones you come across, you and your partner must solve puzzles that require both of you to progress. It Takes Two approaches co-op-based puzzles similar to how Portal 2 did, where you will have one half of the tool needed to traverse and your partner will have the other half. For example, in the early levels, May will have a hammerhead that she can use to swing off nails and smash objects, whereas Cody will get a set of nails that he can throw into walls to get May somewhere or to hold a platform into place.

This sort of co-op naturally lends itself to teamwork as the players NEED to work together to progress, a lot of co-op games like to pit the players against each other, whether they intended to or not, and I find that style of co-op can take the fun out of it. It Takes Two isn’t free of competitive aspects though, as there are little mini-games sprinkled throughout where you play against your partner in little challenges. This breaks up the puzzle gameplay a little and with 25 of these minigames, if I remember correctly, that range from chess to tug of war, there’s variety to be had. 

The puzzles themselves are imaginative and fun to figure out, but I didn’t find any of them to be particularly challenging. There wasn’t a point where either myself or my partner felt stuck or needed to think about it, so if you’re looking for a challenging time I doubt you’ll get that here. Pretty much once you know how the tools work you can breeze through most of the levels with the only real challenge that we had during our playtime being the toolbox boss fight, but that was more to do with weird camera placement rather than any actual challenge. That said, this game is about preventing a divorce rather than creating one so it’s likely that the lack of challenge was on purpose so that even people who aren’t familiar with games can get some fun out of this, this is a couples game after all.

On the visual side of things, It Takes Two is a very pretty game that is just one big explosion of colour and imagination with relatively mundane locations such as a garden shed or a greenhouse being turned into something straight out of a child’s imagination. The most interesting thing about the design of It Takes Two is that it’s the same engine as A Way Out, and when you see the human characters at the beginning you can see the similarities between the two games but when you get shrunk into the doll’s world then the world takes on a new aesthetic with a mix of both the realistic and fantastical, it’s quite the sight.

You will spend pretty much the whole game in split-screen, with Cody always being on the left and May always being on the right. I looked for a setting to see if it was possible to switch the screens around but I couldn’t find anything. There are times where the cameras will come together either for cutscenes or certain gameplay sections, but about 90% of your time will be spent with the split camera. I personally prefer this type of co-op camera to the type you often see in other games, such as the Lego games where the camera stays centered and moving around angles it to a certain player or section. This does come with it’s own problems though, for example, at times the player characters will be tiny on the screen and when it comes to sections where you need to platform precisely or time your jumps to avoid danger it can make things harder for you because you are essentially using only half of your screen.

It Takes Two is also quite lengthy for a co-op game, clocking in around 8 – 10 hours of gameplay and potentially more if you take your time with the mini-games and puzzles, so I hope you and your partner have time to spend. Normally I would say that a co-op game needs to be on the short side, because not only does it need to keep you entertained, it needs to keep the other person entertained as well, and when it comes to puzzle games throw in the inevitable frustration of when the other person just isn’t getting the puzzle to add to the reasons why you don’t want a co-op to be too long. It Takes Two doesn’t suffer from these issues due to the aforementioned puzzle simplicity and variety of gameplay, even if you weren’t enjoying a certain section of the game it’s more than likely that you’ll enjoy the next so that feeling of discovery and something new is always driving you forward.

The levels themselves are full of little interactive elements that don’t progress the story or even have a real purpose outside of “they’re fun,” it’s a design philosophy you’d find in Mario games and it adds that little sprinkle of charm that makes It Takes Two fun to play with someone else as you’ll come across several of these “come look at this” moments organically rather than having a button prompt that shoves it into your face.

The voice cast also does a pretty good job as well with the main characters, Cody and May voiced by Joseph Balderrama and Annabelle Dowler, doing a great job of portraying these characters. Joseph also pulls a double shift in this game as he also voices the Book of Love Dr. Hakim. The only complaint I would level against the game would mostly be that sometimes the characters don’t know when to shut up. Pretty much every action is accompanied by some sort of commentary that can get on your nerves after a few hours of hearing it again and again and again. Having your characters animated and active is great and all, but there is a value in sitting back at times and letting what is on screen do the talking.

Overall, It Takes Two is a charming co-op game that is the perfect distraction for you and your partner for a while and I find it to be one of the most well-put-together co-op games I’ve played in a while. Of course, your enjoyment of this game will vary depending on who you play it with but you can largely reduce that risk because even if you don’t want to play couch co-op and you just want to play online, only one person needs to buy the game while the other can download the free “Friend’s Pass” and play with you. If you’re a fan of co-op It Takes Two is simply a must-have game.

You can purchase It Takes Two from the respective PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and Origin storefronts using the links provided, if you are an EA Play member you can play It Takes Two for 10% less.

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