Following on from A Way Out and It Takes Two, you know what you’re going to get from Hazelight Studios’ latest game, Split Fiction. Given their popularity, it’s a wonder why nobody else has really sought to imitate their particular brand of co-op gaming, with its forced split-screen, endlessly inventive gameplay combinations, and fractious character partnerships that gradually work their way together over the course of a dozen or so hours.
Like Amazon backing a film or TV project with an anti-capitalist message and evil, bald billionaire boss, there’s something a bit jarring to EA publishing a game that basically has an amalgamation of EA and Ubisoft as the villains of the piece. Mio and Zoe have been suckered in by the promise of getting one of their stories published, but Rader is actually intent on draining them and a clutch of other wannabe writers of all their ideas and inspirations.
The pantomime villainy goes so far that the actual CEO is directly responsible for them ending up in the same VR brain-draining machine together, and there’s no way of getting them out safely… for some reason. Instead, they have to fight their way out, using the appearance of glitches to move between worlds drawn from their own minds, breaking the imagination-sapping machine and using their combined abilities to overcome these creations.
It’s a classic case of two total opposites being forced to come together. Mio is a sci-fi writer who deals in dark and gritty dystopias, while Zoe is a nature-loving fantasy writer. They hate each other’s stories, Zoe getting under Mio’s skin, whether it’s despairing at the bleak worlds she’s conjured (and the thinly veiled inspirations) or the boundless positivity that shines through her own fiction.
Truth be told, there’s probably a reason why they’re unpublished writers. The opening hours of the game aren’t exactly narrative masterpieces, playing into genre tropes or riffing off blockbuster game franchises – there’s a whole Halo 2 sequence, for example – and so much of the game’s dialogue is spent telling you what you’re about to come up against instead of letting these worlds flourish on their own. The reaction that Mio and Zoe have toward each other’s work also feels shallow and immature, not really helping you warm to the pair.
Of course, as you progress through the game, they gradually warm to one another, and we get to understand the underlying inspirations that are drawn from their real lives and backgrounds. You can see these reveals coming a mile off, but they’re handled well and feed into the game worlds you’re experiencing excellently.
As you reach each new world, Mio and Zoe are handed strongly contrasting abilities, making you collaborate and communicate all the way through as you play. It can be Mio having a ninja sword that can also latch onto gravity-shifting pads, while Zoe has a grapple beam to move objects around, or Mio has a monkey transformation while Zoe becomes a fairy. How these abilities are combined is as inventive as ever, and Hazelight never stick around with a single concept for very long or it diverts to a bombastic action set piece before returning to an idea, and then building up to some spectacular boss battles.
That variety is helped furthered by the optional Side Stories that you find dotted throughout. You see, it’s not just the main story that they’ve been working on that is presented here, with Rader’s inspiration sucking machine actually drawing out every single story and idea they’ve ever had – could they be any more evil? They’re smaller asides that bounce you to the opposing genre for a brief interlude, taking half an idea that might not fit with the main story and just having a bit of fun with it.
They can be co-op puzzles, action set pieces, or just moments of childlike whimsy… like being a sausage that needs to cook themselves, get doused in ketchup and mustard, and then hop into a nice bun, ready to be eaten – I wouldn’t be surprised if this is actually a little story from Joseph Fares’ daughters, or something he came up with to entertain them specifically.
The co-op is presented once more as a dynamic split-screen view, regardless of whether you are playing locally or online – once again, the Friends Pass allows you to buy one copy of the game and play online with someone who hasn’t bought it, and now with cross-play. There’s typically an even split down the screen and you have individual control, but depending on the scene and the moment, the view can shift to give you a shared world view or put emphasis in different places.
It’s sometimes a little cramped when you want a better horizontal view, but the action is generally active and engrossing enough that you’re completely sucked into your own side of the screen, and only remember that you can look at the other side if you get stuck and need to natter about what you’re doing.
The game’s opening hours aren’t as memorable as in It Takes Two, and there’s some inconsistency in how interactive and fleshed out each world and idea is, but it finds its groove as you reach the middle third – helped by some of the more outlandish Side Stories – and by the time you reach the game’s final couple hours, Hazelight really flex their creative muscles. There’s so many standout moments built around one-off ideas, Hazelight knowing how to toy with everything they’ve established up until that point, and playing with your expectations to great effect.
