![]() What surprised me, though, with “It Takes Two” was how robust the game felt. I’ve always been a big fan of couch co-op games and I love playing “Overcooked” or more recently “Moving Out.” But as a solo pandemic dweller, I haven’t been able to really experience those titles, despite them being some of my favorite types of games to play. But “It Takes Two” is designed in a way that you both either sink or swim - nothing in between.ĭo you see the games that Fares and his teams lead are something of a niche? While losing can still be part of the fun in gaming, constantly carrying all the blame when co-op is involved can discourage gamers from coming back and trying again. Even the boss fights themselves remove any potential for advanced players to blame others for letting the entire team down, as the battle continues as long as one player can stay alive until the other returns to action. ![]() A simple misstep off a ledge is punishable by only a seconds-long respawn at the same place rather than complete removal from the session and that’s bound to relieve more novice players. When losing, when a character “dies,” the game is also extremely forgiving. Whether you’re fighting a boss or walking through the different - and aesthetically pleasing - levels, each player is relying on the other to move forward. It was neat to experience a title specifically designed to foster genuine cooperation. What I mean by that is, although I love every title in the “Soulsborne” series, “Grand Theft Auto Online” and more, gamers can usually get away with playing alone or summoning help to do all of the heavy lifting. ![]() PRICE: It’s funny, Todd, it wasn’t until I started playing “It Takes Two” that I realized the vast majority of my favorite games that offer “co-op” actually don’t mandate cooperation. MARTENS: Chris, I know you regularly play online with friends and I know you gravitate toward more competitive games than I generally do, so I’m curious, what were your initial impressions of a cooperative game like “It Takes Two”? What follows is our conversation about the game. Chris leans toward painstakingly difficult role-playing games where losing - a lot - is inevitable. We both came to “It Takes Two” with different video game preferences: I prefer light challenges and story-driven games that ask big questions. But we spent pretty much an entire Sunday with the game, which came out this week for PlayStation and Xbox consoles as well as PCs. My colleague Chris Price and I have yet to finish “It Takes Two,” the latest from welcomingly outspoken game developer Josef Fares (“Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons,” “A Way Out”). But it also adds an edge of competitiveness to what is otherwise a cooperative game as it aims to lighten the tension of a bickering couple with outlandish scenes and characters (an angry vacuum, a scientifically advanced squirrel community). It immediately gives players roles and assigns them characters with a history. There’s an underlying message behind each level, namely the little things they overlooked but the game is also hiding some bite, both in its themes and in its challenges.Īs a character-focused two-player game, the Hazelight Studios title makes a strong effort to match gameplay with personality. Here, a young girl’s imagination and desire for her parents to stay together transform mom and pop into clay-like toys, forcing them to explore their home and their yard “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"-style. “It Takes Two” wants to bring us together by raising questions on how we fall apart. It’s also arriving after a year of pandemic social distancing, in a moment in which we’ve learned that games can connect us. Even when “It Takes Two” inspires a raised eyebrow, it does so with a divorce-themed story that’s rare for slick, run-and-jump-driven puzzle games. But that’s largely because this is a pop-culture arena where such topics have yet to be regularly explored. Give this to “It Takes Two”: It shows that potential movie and TV clichés - say, a couple that’s a soon-to-be ex-couple working together - translate surprisingly well to video games.
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