It Takes Two Review

 A healthy marriage is like the ultimate co-op game: You have to know when to give and take, when to push and pull, and when to talk and when to listen. But most importantly, you must always remember when it’s your turn to take the garbage out - something Hazelight Studios has certainly done during the development of the almost entirely garbage-free It Takes Two. This utterly superb co-op platformer manages to cram in enough unique and exhilarating gameplay ideas to give Shigeru Miyamoto a migraine, with not a single dud among them.

Centering around a pair of pint-sized parents, May and Cody, It Takes Two is a bit like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids if the director had been tripping on LSD. The world around you isn’t merely supersized, but augmented with all manner of fabulous contraptions and anthropomorphic everything. May and Cody’s journey from their garden shed back to their house takes them on dazzling detours through everywhere from outer space to a tiny nightclub housed inside an air conditioning vent (attended by grooving hordes of anthropomorphic glow sticks, naturally), and serves as a sustained, 10-hour-long blast of co-op platforming bliss that’s constantly conjuring up new ways to engage and entertain.

This whole arc is a virtuosic showcase of what this game does so well. Like developer Hazelight's previous game, A Way Out, It Takes Two can only be played in co-op, online or local, and success requires teamwork. This level introduces a new tool for each character to use, doles out a wide variety of tasks for you to accomplish with those tools, and then puts it all together in a wildly creative boss battle that forces you to work together to succeed. It's astoundingly good and the rest of the game maintains a consistently high bar of quality.

It Takes Two is the most creative 3D platformer I've played in years, but it builds on well-trod family comedy territory, with a story that marries elements of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! and The Parent Trap. May and Cody are a 30-something couple who just can't seem to find the time to spend with each other. When they are together, they can't stop fighting. As the game begins, they sit their preteen daughter Rose down at the kitchen table to tell her they're getting a divorce. Rose is, understandably, upset. She goes to her room, where she pulls out a pair of dolls: one made of clay, which looks like Cody, and one carved from wood, which resembles May. She cries, and when the tears land on the dolls, the ill-defined kind of magic that animates movies like Freaky Friday and 17 Again springs into action, transforming the flesh and blood May and Cody into their doll doppelgangers.

Co-opportunities for Success

Importantly, every action feels fantastic to perform. The platforming essentials are on point, with May and Cody’s jump, double-jump, and air-dash abilities being supremely responsive and allowing for effortless levels of platforming precision. But it’s the complimentary, character-specific abilities that are refreshed in each chapter that compelled me and my partner to work as a team and make It Takes Two a special style of platformer, turning seemingly simple ascents up the side of a cliff face into carefully choreographed back-and-forths and coordinated chants of “3-2-1-Go!”

Early on, Cody might have a bandolier of nails that he can throw into walls to plot a path of rungs for May to swing between with her claw hammer, while later May can use her water gun to soak fertile soil to allow Cody to plant himself and bloom into a winding flower with petals for platforms. These gizmos and abilities each deftly double as platform puzzle-solving tools and boss-fighting aids: May’s clone ability allows her to teleport from one weighted switch to another to trigger timed mechanisms, but it also enables her to lure a charging bull boss towards an obstacle before beaming herself out of harm’s way at the last second. The only catch to the split ability set is that there are occasionally moments where the enjoyment level is lopsided, where one character is pinballed around an area while the other can only watch, but it all evens out in the end and – if anything – it makes me want to replay it with swapped characters, just to see how the other half lived.

It Takes Two also has the ability to effortlessly make mirth out of the mundane. In real life, my children’s fidget spinners seem like pointless trinkets, the forgotten remnants of a passing fad now cluttering up shelf space. In It Takes Two, they are whirring hoverboards that allow you to surf your way over giant inflatable slides, pulling spectacular midair tricks like a pair of tiny Tony Hawks.

Here's an example from the garden level. Cody and May enter an area and find a large group of moles sleeping. A common household pest, but in their shrunken state, the couple are dwarfed by the creatures. As you approach the restful rodents, a meter appears at the side of the screen indicating how much noise the two of you are making. You crouch to muffle your footsteps, but to get past the creatures, you still need to jump between stones, over the noisy red mulch in between, and manage how loud your landing is. Easy enough.

We made it through this section on the first try and, when I noticed that the noise meter had disappeared, I assumed that this brief, one-off stealth section had come to a close. But then we moved into a second shady area, this one populated by a few dozen more dozing moles and substantially fewer rocks to help traverse the mulch. In this garden section, Cody has temporarily been granted the ability to turn into a plant at certain key moments, and that ability comes into play here. I morphed into moss, moving in time with May's movements, providing a rolling carpet of greenery to muffle her footsteps as we snuck past the moles. Eventually, we made it to the other side and the coast seemed clear. But then we heard the sound of a stampeding mole in the distance, and the splitscreen perspective merged into one shared screen with the camera in front of us framing a Crash Bandicoot-style run-at-the-camera chase scene. As the chase stretched on, the camera shifted perspectives multiple times, introducing new challenges each time. We escaped down a pit and found another mole who, startled by our appearance, fell on its back, blocking our path downward. So, we ground-pounded the poor creature's belly until it fell out the bottom and we scrambled through one last bit of sidescrolling. At the end, we found a pair of frogs, saddled up, and hopped on to the next challenge.

This is It Takes Two's impressive loop. You are constantly doing something new and novel. Each chapter has moments like that moss moment, where the game introduces a new mechanic, briefly iterates on it, and then quickly moves on to something completely different. Most surprisingly, each new mechanic feels good. The game is built around a framework of Ratchet and Clank-style platforming action, merging running and jumping with left trigger, right trigger shooting. But everything that Hazelight has built on top of that structure can change on a dime. You might be holding the right trigger to pilot a flying fidget spinner, or you might be using the same button to cause a plant to grow, creating a bridge for your co-op partner.