Split Fiction: A Co-op Adventure Blending Creativity and Technology

Split Fiction review: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Split Fiction review: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Split Fiction MSRP $50.00 Score Details "Split Fiction delivers awe-inspiring co-op action, but its weak narrative is another story." Pros Sharp platforming Tons of creative gameplay twists Genius co-op puzzling Impressive performance Cons Very weak writing Dull sci-fi world design Levels drag a bit too long Table of Contents Table of Contents Games on books Co-op creativity We care a lot Okay, how do I start this thing? I mean, there are going to be hundreds of Split Fiction reviews going live at the same time. If I'm going to get people to read mine, I need a strong hook. I want this to feel like the definitive review of the thing! How about a funny anecdote about my girlfriend getting me killed? It's personal, relatable to the people out there planning to play this with their partner. No, too easy. Everyone is going to do that. Oh, what if I come out swinging? This sucker is going to get breathless praise and immediate "game of the year" buzz. I could lead with my criticism of its weak writing. A dissenting opinion! Actually, maybe that's too much. I mean, I still really enjoyed my time with it. Recommended Videos Oh, I've got it! It's a game about writers! I can do a whole meta thing! Like, I'm writing about writing the review. I can reflect what the story says about the creative process, while doing a sort of "co-op" review shtick where I'm arguing with myself. That's clever! That's unique! No, wait, that's so, so stupid. Split Fiction, the latest co-op adventure from It Takes Two developer Hazelight, couldn't be landing at a better time. The story about Mio and Zoe, two writers who become victims of a publishing house's exploitative new tech initiative, comes right at a moment where artists are having their work mined by AI models and regurgitated into soulless drivel. Their adventure isn't just a fun excuse for Hazelight to flex its design muscles and create more world class co-op puzzle platforming; it's a much needed reminder that creativity is inseparable from humanity. Split Fiction | Official Gameplay Reveal Trailer Great art can't be generated from a series of prompts. Everything from a book to a video game is born from meaningful decisions that only a human could make. The pain of losing a loved one can become evocative words on a page. The warm memory of playing Sonic the Hedgehog for the first time can create the foundation for a lovingly crafted platforming level. Even the way a story begins is shaped by countless creative decisions built to pull readers into a specific mindset. It doesn't always work. Art can be as messy as the people making it. It can be thematically incoherent, self-indulgent, or in desperate need of an editor. God knows Split Fiction isn't perfect -- far from it, in fact -- but that just means that it has a pulse. That's something that we've begun to take for granted in our current age of big tech annihilation. Okay, that all sounds smart. Probably. People love it when you smack talk AI, at least. Easy win. And hopefully that gives me enough leeway to tear this thing's poor writing apart, while still leaving space to celebrate it as a sharply designed co-op adventure made from a passionate studio of artists who put their whole heart into their craft. Sure. Games on books Duplicating the winning formula of its 2021 Game of the Year winner It Takes Two, Split Fiction is another Hazelight adventure game built with two-player split screen in mind. Though while its previous game was a playable rom com that made it a perfect thematic marriage of story and gameplay, Split Fiction has a tougher time wedding those halves. The story here is that Mio and Zoe are struggling writers who are so desperate to get published that they take a shady offer from Rader, a corporation that has built a magical machine that brings stories to life. When Mio gets cold feet about the process, she accidentally winds up getting trapped in the machine alongside Zoe, where their clashing ideas manifest as sci-fi and fantasy worlds. It should be an easy slam dunk. Split Fiction positions itself as a game for the moment, with Rader standing in for big tech companies like Google. You can read it as a searing takedown of AI, as Rader's ultimate goal is to harvest ideas from its unsuspecting test subjects and turn their meaningful art into hollow immersive experiences. The story says all the right things that its players will want to hear, painting Mio and Zoe as true artists whose writing comes from real personal experiences that a machine could never understand. Should I mention VGC's interview with director Josef Fares here, where he shrugged off the idea that AI is a real problem and seemed fine with the idea that it could lead to layoffs? Is that relevant context that helps set up my criticism? Or would that just be a performative paragraph built for people to screenshot and share on social media? I mean, art should function on its own, but surely the discrepancy between the story's take on tech and its director's can start to explain why it doesn't work. No, better to focus on the work in front of me. In a cruel twist of fate, the social commentary is trampled by confounding writing at every turn. Mio and Zoe are both presented as great artists and total hacks interchangeably throughout the story. Their "novels" manifest as a series of humdrum genre setpieces that don't have much plot behind them. There are high fantasy dragon battles, explosive motorbike chase sequences, and other thin plots that are built entirely on tropes. Few of them tell an actual story; they're just sequences of events largely inspired by scenes from nerdy media. Mio and Zoe even comment on that throughout the story, criticizing one another for writing such overplayed ideas. These are tales that a machine could in fact come up with, kneecapping Split Fiction's message about originality. In the same breath, Hazelight wants players to believe that the silly stories it is poking fun at are also emotional and human. Most stories end with some sort of sob story monologue about how all that jumping between flying cars is actually about family drama. Surprise! It's entirely unearned every single time; the ideas are never told through level design and gameplay, something that Psychonauts 2 so expertly nails. We're expected to take Zoe and Mio at their word, but art has to function on its own. Their stories never do and Split Fiction rings hollow as a game about intricate creative decision making for it. Split Fiction has a thin relationship with art. This is a game about books that could not be less interested in actual literature. We're supposed to be playing through visualizations of Zoe and Mio's novels, but those levels only ever speak in the language of movies and video games. They are told through puzzles and action set pieces exclusively. How many books have you read where the heroes must dance with a monkey king by doing a Simon Says minigame? Why am I constantly seeing Dark Souls Easter eggs and Sonic the Hedgehog jokes in their story worlds? Split Fiction feels like a game made by people who have never read a book. God, no, that's so pithy. People are going to take that literally and drag me for it on Reddit. You're supposed to be the nuanced critic! What do I actually want to say? Maybe it's that it feels symptomatic of a larger loss of literacy in culture, something that's tied to the very tech commentary Split Fiction is making. This is what some people think books are actually like. The complexity of the written word is lost on GoodReads reviews and BookTok influencers that just see them as genre movies made of paper. Isn't it counterproductive to make a game about books that's actually just about games? Are Zoe and Mio writers just because books feel more aesthetically serious than video games? Would it have killed Hazelight to reference Frankenstein instead of Tron? Oh, that's kind of funny. Would it have killed Hazelight to reference Frankenstein instead of Tron? Co-op creativity Jeeze, that was more searing than I expected it to be. It sounds like I hate this thing! I don't ... right? I had a great time playing it. Killer puzzles. Smooth platforming. Creative as heck. I've got to balance this back out before people get the wrong impression. Let's get a good transition line here, real slick like. What Split Fiction lacks in story it makes up for in its gameplay. Moron. Split Fiction more effectively communicates its thesis on creativity where it counts: through design. There's a good reason that It Takes Two took home the Game Award for Game of the Year; Hazelight is a studio that's both loaded with ideas and cares enough about them to do them right. The story is broken up into two-hour chunks that swap players between Mio's sci-fi stories and Zoe's fantasy worlds. The two halves are linked together by strong platforming fundamentals, as Zoe and Mio magnetize to footholds and poles to keep the adventure manageable for inexperienced players who are pulled into it by their gaming partners. Well, I mean, aside from the momentum-killing flying sections that feature unwieldy controls to pilot floaty spaceships and wingsuits. But don't force every nitpick into this. Save it for hour five of a deep dive podcast that's longer than the game, where you can tell some boring anecdote about having to help your partner through a few sections. That dual-genre premise allows Hazelight to play around with ever-changing gameplay hooks, dropping them before they've run out of new ways to use them. In one level, my girlfriend and I start out by transporting dragon eggs around and using them to open doors. Soon after, they evolve into bigger lizards with unique powers. Mine can glide through the air and spit acid that melts metal; hers can climb up vines and spin dash into objects. Later, they grow to their full size and we're sent into a cinematic aerial chase sequence. Part of the fun comes from trying to guess where each unpredictable idea is going to go next. The best levels use those ideas to fuel ingenious co-op puzzling that's built for split screen play. My favorite section turned both my girlfriend and I into orbs. She could magnetize to some surfaces and repel from others, while I could turn into a swarm of nanobots that could hack objects and transform. Some puzzles had me turning into a boat that she could jump into so I could safely transport her across water. Others had her unraveling a metal walkway for me with her magnets. Each puzzle required us to talk through exactly what we were doing and coordinate with one another. It's not about skill and timing so much as cracking the execution together. Don't do it. Don't you dare say it's the best co-op game since Portal 2. You already did that with It Takes Two, and Split Fiction isn't even as consistent as that. I don't care if there are some space-bending levels here that clearly call back to it. That game came out 14 years ago. We as a society need to move on from comparing co-op games to Portal 2. It's not that Split Fiction is doing anything groundbreaking here. These ideas were present in It Takes Two and largely made more thematic sense in that context. That is a game about relationships that was designed to feel like a couple's therapy session. Teamwork isn't as relevant to Split Fiction's weaker story, but the creative spirit is. Every level is a hand-crafted design flex by developers who are excited to show off. You can see that most in Split Fiction's optional side stories, which toss players into Mio and Zoe's old, unfinished ideas. Some of those offer the adventure's best levels. A childhood tale plays out in a 2D adventure drawn in pencil, while another casts the duo as walking teeth in a hyperactive 5 year old's birthday story. More than anything, it reminds me of Super Mario Bros. Wonder with its wealth of playful gameplay twists born from sticky notes. That's better. We care a lot Split Fiction may not reach the same heights as its predecessor, but ... but it's a suitable follow-up that ... that ... Oh no. No. Not writer's block. Not now. I'm right at the end here. I've got a deadline to meet. Why did I make this so complicated? Why couldn't I just file a normal review instead of drawing up some high-concept bit? I could have been done with this hours ago. "Its drab sci-fi visuals leave much to be desired, but it runs at a smooth framerate and I never encountered a single bug, even during its technically stunning finale." "Each level goes on 30 minutes too long for a casual session, ballooning up what should be a tight adventure with a few too many gimmicks." See? Easy. That's all people really want to read anyways, right? Nobody is looking to this review to learn something about the human condition. It's a checklist attached to a reductive score that people can argue about online. Fodder for YouTubers overreacting to out of context pull quotes in videos with sensationalized titles. An opinion to be unwillingly aggregated and incorrectly summarized by Google Gemini. Why should I put so much time into each word, desperate to communicate something to readers with each choice I stress over, when we live in a cultural climate that is outright hostile to original thought? Maybe that's why Split Fiction still resonates with me even in its messiest moments. Its writing hardly lands, but the sheer craft on display is inspiring. Every time I jump into a side story and discover an entirely new art style or gameplay idea that lasts for a few short minutes and then disappears, I'm left in awe of Hazelight's commitment. This isn't a fast food value menu item generated from careful focus group testing; it's an outpouring of original ideas from people who care about their craft. Who cares if it lives up to It Takes Two's high bar? Who cares if it's "GOTY material?" Who cares if it's the best co-op game since Portal 2? What's more important is that we take the time to engage with what its creators want to tell us, respecting the art people make for one another enough to both criticize it when it doesn't work and celebrate it when it does. Okay. Yeah, okay. So, how about something like this: Split Fiction is hokey, muddled, and needlessly self-defeating. It's also lively, inventive, and so earnest that it's hard to be mad at it for long. These aren't opposing forces that tear Hazelight's latest apart; the clumsiness is inseparable from the delight. Both are born from the ambitious vision of artists who still believe in the magic of creativity and are willing to take big swings in its honor. Sometimes it absolutely whiffs. We all do. Fail again. Fail better. But it's those moments where it connects, where simple ideas turn into unforgettable spectacle, that remind us why art can't be automated. Even the most advanced machine can never dream bigger than a human with a heart. Split Fiction was tested on PS5.

Split Fiction: The Kotaku Review

In the dozen or so hours a friend and I put into Split Fiction, the latest co-op game from It Takes Two developer Hazelight, it never seemed to run out of ideas. This latest release, with its marriage of fantasy and science fiction, still feels as fresh and inventive as It Takes Two and A Way Out did for their time, which is all the more impressive considering that the studio has been releasing these co-op adventures now for the better part of a decade. Split Fiction follows two aspiring writers: Mio, a broody science fiction author, and Zoe, a bubbly fantasy lover. The two could not be more diametrically opposed, but they only have to suffer each other's presence for a day as they meet at the offices of Rader Publishing, each hoping to secure a deal for her books. However, when the corporation asks that they enter a virtual simulation of their own stories, Mio is rightfully suspicious and tries to fight her way out, before she is accidentally forced into Zoe's simulation and the entire system goes haywire. Now, with both writers' stories intertwined, Mio and Zoe must break out of the simulation by finding glitches scattered throughout, all while trying to survive in hostile fictional environments of their own creation. Order Split Fiction: Amazon | Best Buy | CDKeys On its face, Split Fiction's swapping back and forth between science fiction levels and vast fantasy worlds is novel, but not groundbreaking. Most of the stories Mio and Zoe hop between are pretty generic and derivative, blatantly drawing on everything from Mega Man to your favorite dragon fantasy book, so clearly Split Fiction isn't trying to be the video-game equivalent of the next great American novel. It's riffing on existing aesthetics and archetypes, using them as a stage to build out its mechanics. The part of the premise that hits much harder is how pertinent it feels in the age of corporate-driven AI slop. Mio, Zoe, and all the other authors who show up at Rader's office come bright-eyed and bushy-tailed looking for a publishing deal, and instead are trapped in a simulation meant to extract their ideas for the company's own use. Right now, AI machine learning algorithms are being trained to steal from creatives and present the garbage they churn out as original works, while the people poised to profit from them use notions of leveling the creative playing field to justify the plagiarism these tools depend on. Even if director Josef Fares seems hesitant to call it the core theme of the game, choosing instead to focus on the friendship between the two women in interviews, I'd say the most compelling thing about Split Fiction is the cathartic act of artistic reclamation. The game spends plenty of time delving into why Mio writes violent sci-fi and Zoe delves into escapist fantasy, and fighting through their stories means confronting all the internal baggage that those worlds have tied to them in their writers' imaginations. So often we talk about how AI technology steals from artists, writers, and actors as a crime against their livelihoods. While that's an important part of it, what I loved most about Split Fiction was that it illustrates how generative slop also robs the work of its human meaning. Yeah, Rader's machines can probably generate an amorphous science fiction story faster and cheaper than the one Mio writes, but if it's not fueled by her past and all the trauma she's gone through, it's just capital C Content to be bought and consumed. And yeah, the stories my co-op partner and I played through aren't going to be winning any literary awards, but they were made by a person with hopes, dreams, and things to say. Fighting our way through those stories to save them from being devoured by some rich asshole's machine gives them meaning, even if they're not that interesting on their own. Using Mio and Zoe's stories as a basis, Split Fiction riffs on similar design ideas as It Takes Two. Each level shifts between genres and also has a core cooperative loop that requires you and your co-op partner to coordinate. As the game shifts between fantasy and sci-fi, every level leans into a different subgenre and that means even any two sci-fi levels will play entirely differently. Split Fiction is bursting at the seams with fun and challenging ideas that blend video game genres as much as literary ones. I know plenty of people played It Takes Two with partners who were less familiar with video games and generally managed fine; Split Fiction takes on so many different gaming genres that it may at first seem tougher to handle for those less versed in games, but its design goes to great lengths to keep things approachable, even for those who have never played the kinds of games it's referencing. There are levels based on rhythm games and old-school run-and-guns like Metal Slug, as well as sequences involving high-speed bike chases, puzzle-solving on dragonback, and even some out-of-pocket side stories I won't spoil here. What ties it all together is a clear attention to intuitive design that makes it easy to transition from one tightly crafted space to another and pick up on new mechanics unlike anything you've played up to that point. The game seamlessly escalates between teaching you a new mechanic and then communicating new ways it can be used within a level, and the way it throws new tools and problems your way is consistently surprising. Communication between both players is an important part of Split Fiction, but because there's such clarity to how levels are designed, there were long stretches in which my partner and I could get through tricky cooperative maneuvers without even speaking. So many standout moments in Split Fiction had me and my partner hootin' and hollerin' as we took on whatever Hazelight threw at us. The game's willingness to get silly, both in between the edgy sci-fi stories and fantasy epics and sometimes in the midst of them, was a constant pleasant surprise. I was already enjoying Split Fiction, but the moment it clicked with me was in one of Mio's science fiction stories in which I was driving a motorcycle through a cyberpunk city while my partner, on the back of the bike, was attempting to disengage its self-destruct order on a smartphone, a process which included realistic captcha puzzles and various other annoying things our phones ask us to do on the way to being useful. It was in that segment that I knew Split Fiction would keep us on our toes and we would never know what to expect. Several of these surprising and silly segments happen during side stories, which are optional vignettes from the subconscious of the writers dating back as far as their early memories of writing childish nonsense in elementary school. They might see a dentist appointment turned into a straight-up horror story, or make a whole puzzle-platformer out of pigs launching themselves with rainbow-powered farts. Split Fiction could have stuck to its sci-fi and fantasy levels and still been an excellent game, but I loved the way it illustrated that storytelling doesn't just start when you're putting pen to paper intending to be published. A creative person is often imagining stories from a young age, and if a machine is going to rip those stories out of someone's mind, why would it only pull from the ones they intended to put into a book? The one part of the game that I won't spoil but have to sing the praises of is the final level. Throughout Split Fiction, I was curious how the game would spotlight both its heroes and their stories equally in its finale, and the way Hazelight goes about wrapping up the game is, without exaggeration, one of the most impressive video game sequences I've ever played. The studio was straight up just showing off at this point, and I'm kinda mad I'll never experience it for the first time again. That's the kind of feeling you can't scrap from a creative person's brain and sell as slop. Split Fiction is a culmination of the design ideas the studio has been working with since A Way Out, and it kinda feels like Hazelight threw everything it had at a wall, and it all stuck. It's a tribute to several video games and to genre fiction, but also to the creative process itself. Fares may think people and AI should co-exist in creative fields, but when you're already making games this inventive, do they have to? I don't think so.