EA and Hazelight have released a new trailer for their upcoming co-op game It Takes Two, showcasing the game’s varied action platforming gameplay and some of the many set pieces and game ideas that have been thrown into the mix.
It Takes Two will be out on 26th March 2021, coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Announced in June 2020, It Takes Two follows Cody and May, an embittered married couple on the verge of divorce who are magically turned into dolls by their daughter, who issues a plea to a Book of Love penned by a certain Dr. Hakim. An anthropomorphic book version of Dr. Hakim then guides the couple through a fantastical adventure, exploring the many sides of a relationship and (hopefully) helping the two patch things up.
The gameplay trailer promises vast amount of variety on the journey the two take, with no two scenes quite alike. though they do lean on certain video game tropes in the process. There’s rail grinding, biplane flying, owl riding, top-down hack ‘n slashing, and more briefly glimpsed in the trailer, but Game Director Josef Fares dove into one particular scenario as a key example.
Cody and May visit some squirrels in their tree, but find themselves gang-pressed into their fight against an encroaching wasp army, with Cody using a sap gun to slow and cover wasps in sticky goop, and May having a match gun that can make the sap explode. Elsewhere, Cody’s sap gun can weight down objects, while May’s match gun can spin triggers to open up the path ahead.
Elsewhere, they’ll be stuck with opposite sides of a magnet, using the magnetic properties to push and pull parts of the world, and another level lets Cody manipulate time while May can clone herself to zip around the world. Each level is thematically different and the gameplay shifts to match, often giving the two players different, complimentary roles.
That’s all before you consider the minigames spread through the levels, with whack-a-mole, Scalectrix, ice skating races and more shown in the demo.
Designed from the ground up for co-op play, the vast majority of the game takes place with a fixed split-screen view. This is true, whether you play in local couch co-op or play in online co-op – you’ll always see both viewpoints. As with Hazelight’s last game, A Way Out, the game will ship with alongside a free Friends Pass version of the game, allowing you to buy the game once and share it with another person, even if you are separated over the internet. Both of you can enjoy the full game like this, and it’s a vital part of the game to accommodate the full co-op experience.
The game is a follow up to the 2019’s A Way Out. In our review of that game, I wrote:
After Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, I came into A Way Out with expectations of a fraught and trying prison escape drama. That’s just the beginning though, and it soon transforms into a fun revenge flick. It doesn’t have the emotional impact of Brothers, and there’s some rough edges from the breadth of ideas that Hazelight include, but most importantly we just had a lot of fun.Â
You can read the full review here.
Source: press release
