It immediately gives players roles and assigns them characters with a history. Its heavy emphasis on divorce may be best suited for older children.Īs a character-focused two-player game, the Hazelight Studios title makes a strong effort to match gameplay with personality. Additionally, at least in its first few hours, “It Takes Two” seems like a rare work aimed primarily at parents - and perhaps some older teens - as it attempts to explore how couples drift apart and the powers that can hold people together. In line with the game’s setup, “It Takes Two” is two-player only, either online or in person, and the bulk of the action takes place via a split-screen. 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. 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.