4.5/5 ★ – DanteSnowcone's review of Split Fiction.

Yet another incredible co-op experience from Hazelight. They definitely lack sophisticated narrative and dialogue, but they more than make up for it with frenetic action sequences, epic boss battles and top-notch interweaving of two players working as one. I was really worried about this game in the first half hour or so. The exposition is so ham-fisted and the plot so loosely held together, and the writing is pretty cheesy. I thought it was gonna be unbearable. Oddly enough, I think that the writing in the back half is much better than the first half, so if you’re like me and put off by tropey writing and adolescent sardonic dialogue, just trust me and power through. Josef Fares’s gameplay philosophy continues to shine here. Pick a gameplay gimmick (or two, since there are two characters), explore it fully, move on quickly. There are fewer chapters than in It Takes Two, but they have more scenes and more elaborate side content that keeps you alternating between sci-fi and fantasy backdrops, so you’re never doing the same thing for very long. My favorite chapter was The Final Cut, but all of them are fun and memorable. The final gauntlet also distorts the general couch co-op setup in a way I’ve never seen before, and I found it very creative. Also, this game is so much more beautiful than I was expecting it to be. The scale that they were able to achieve in these cyberpunk cities and fantasy worlds is impressive. The Halloween world and Zoe’s final chapter both blew me away and left me wondering how the team was able to accomplish this in just four years. I hope they’re all making bank and avoiding crunch because you simply don’t see one-project studios putting out things that look like this in such little time. Perhaps the only real flaw I can think of is that for a game about physically manifesting people’s literary stories, there’s very little that feels like an actual story unfolding. They don’t meet many other characters, the settings either are literally abandoned or feel abandoned, and nothing feels organic or naturally occurring. It’s still plenty of fun, but I couldn’t help noticing that. Find someone you enjoy being with and play this with them. My wife and I had a great time, and though she’s still not quite accustomed to twin-stick movement she held her own and found everything fun and manageable, except one particular optional challenge that she refused to do with me lol. We had a lot of laughs and a lot of triumphs, I loved all their little references, and we can’t wait for whatever they’re cooking up next. Time Played: 14 hours Played on PS5