Video games: Mending a marriage in It Takes Two
Certain storylines that would be rote in a movie “translate surprisingly well to video games,” said Todd Martens in the Los Angeles Times. Consider It Takes Two, a new game about a soon-to-bedivorced couple who are forced in a crisis to cooperate again. In outline, it’s the stuff of a light comedy adventure, especially because the premise is that their daughter’s tears have magically shrunk Mom and Dad to tiny-doll size and that to regain normal human height the pair must overcome such giant obstacles as an angry vacuum cleaner and the backyard squirrels’ hidden military base. But as silly as the gameplay can be, it isn’t mindless. Instead, It Takes Two “wants to bring us together by raising questions on how we fall apart.” And in keeping with its ethos, it requires that two people play, whether remotely or on the same sofa.
It’s “an extraordinary game,” said Cecilia D’Anastasio in Wired.com. The cooperative play it requires is “uncommonly fun,” the details in each setting are delightful, and the developers at Hazelight Studios have found a way to generate “perfect synergy between plot and play.” May and Cody, the lead characters, regularly snipe at each other, bringing up small irritations that over time have carved deep schisms between them. Fortunately, as they move from a pillow fort to a cuckoo clock to a neglected toolshed and to six other levels, the game “makes a fun house of the deep wounds” by encouraging May and Cody not just to work in close tandem but to transcend the sources of their enmity.
“The only real gripe that I can level at It Takes Two is aimed squarely at the character of
Dr. Hakim,” said Tristan Ogilvie in IGN.com. A self-help book with arms, legs, and a mustache, Dr. Hakim is “insufferably cringy” every time he shows up to counsel May and Cody, partly because he speaks in a vague foreign accent. Still, “I was quite charmed by the way the two leads gradually learned to love each other again, even if the story’s final moments aimed for Pixar-style poignancy but came off as slightly saccharine.” The variety of “brilliantly bonkers” gameplay styles is worth the price of admission alone. One moment, Cody may have to throw nails at a shed wall so May can swing across them using a claw hammer. At the next level, May will use a water gun so flowers will sprout from Cody and provide platforms to climb. “If you have any kind of co-op partner in your life, be they spouse, friend, sibling, or even a child, It Takes Two is a truly joyful trip you really need to take together.” Available for Playstation, Xbox, or PC.