Test - Split fiction: Test: The makers from IT Takes Two have it just on it

I would have loved to write at this point: "It's awesome anyway, you already know it for a long time", at least if you know it Takes Two. Split fiction is the new game from the same developer hazelight, who rightly delivered the game-of-year clearer with the co-op platformer 2021.

Split fiction continues everything that the developers already in the quasi-predecessorDrifted to the border to perfection: a terrific unique co-op experience, a full surprise bag of playful creativity, an almost insane change in the game design, an intoxicating flood of ideas that would have been enough for ten games.

Split fiction continues this path consistently: visually even more impressive and staged overwhelming, again mercilessly creative and imaginative, and all of this at a crazy pace that does not leave a second time to breathe. Craziness! Anyone who loves video games cannot be different from Split fiction than enthusiastic. And yet it is not quite enough to get the masterpiece IT Takes Two. But later.

As in IT Takes Two (and its very good but less known quasi-predecessor) basically plays Split fiction in two in the co -op per split screen, optionally locally on a console or online. As has always been a fair tradition at Hazelight, even only one of the players has to own the game and can then invite the other without having to buy it himself.

Science-Fiction trifft Fantasy

You slip into the roles of Mio and Zoe, both young writers. One writes science fiction stories, the other is committed to the fantasy genre. A new invention, which is a little reminiscent of the animus from the Assassin's Creed series, gives you the opportunity to travel your own fictional worlds in a kind of cyberspace. But of course something goes terribly wrong, so that the two have to find a way back to reality together.

And from now on there is a strap, because Split fiction sends you on an insane roller coaster ride through the worlds, just in a futuristic Blade-Runner city, in the next level in the fairytale, then back, but always at an insane pace and with a constant fire that every other developer should be pale before envy.

This variety of ideas: just crazy!

Then jumps, jumps and swings from car to car on a floating space motorway, rides on sand crocodiles through a desert from 1001 nights, brings through a neon city on a tron ​​motorcycle, fight through a factory hall full of Mechs, ride through the clouds on a dragon and deliver a dance battle against the monkey king.

Like it Takes Two changes Split fiction every few minutes, the game genre is primarily a 3D platformer, but, like a best-of-compilation, refers to his inspiration from the entire history of this bouncy and racing genres: from the big Nintendo classics, of course, but also from Megaman, Sonic, Metroid.

Speaking of: the metroid section alone! While one player rolls through the world as a metal ball, the other shoots it with rackets like in a flipper machine. How creative is that possible?! And just like that: yes!

As in the previous games of the Swedish developer studio, the cooperative interaction is completely at the center of experience. While one player can turn into a fairy to fly over abysses, the other player becomes a monkey and climbs on trees in this way. In a level, gravity rotates for one player, so that he goes along the ceiling and throws objects from there from there or reaches places that are inaccessible to those. Then again we find ourselves as a magician in a sunken ghost city, in which one player can open portals like in the classic puzzling portal, while the other invisible platforms from the ghost dimension make visible.

Split fiction burns a staging fireworks on spectacles that remain the spit everywhere. The sight from the Drachenberg into the foggy valley: fabulous! The space station in the orbit of a dying star: epic! The flight through the giant mountains: colossal! The monstrous snake: just wow! "My face, what happens here?! Is that fat! ”Was a sentence that colleague Tim Lenzen and I regularly roared each other in the ear while playing together. Such an accumulation of WTF moments at most succeeded in the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

In general: As I said, Split fiction primarily pays homage to the tradition of the Platformer genre, i.e. the Mario 64 and Ratchet & Clanks of the world, but it seems as if every developer and every developer at Hazelight in Brainstorming have been allowed to throw their personal favorite game into the ring to build a monument: there are unmistakable allusions to Halo, as well as a homage to Metal Solid, Diablo or even Tony Hawk and Shadow of the Colossus. Split fiction is basically a wild ride through the Greatest hits in the entire video game history.

More bombast than innovation

If you want to criticize something about Split fiction, then at most exactly: that it focuses more on staging and bombast and less on the playful sophistication and innovation, as was the case with IT Takes Two. Especially in his first half of the almost 15 hours of playing time, Split Fiction is an incredibly rapid roller coaster ride made of platforming and action, breathlessly performed and undoubtedly overwhelming.

It is playful in terms of play, however, quite classic so as not to say conservative. While IT Takes Two's gaming experience was characterized by a constant change between "Oh my god, how do you want to top that?!" And a "Ah, so!", Split fiction stays in a state of floating for a long time: "Hmm, quite cool, but more is possible." In the beginning you are usually just running. Either somewhere or away in front of something. And that in a backdrop with their neon high-rise buildings and space marines, which could call evil tongues as soulless. Appropriate to this, a framework story from the evil tech group and personal trauma, which may want to sound ambiguous, but only throws clichés on the wall.

Significant for the easy lead that IT Takes Two may claim in front of this successor, there are always passages in which you contest the adventure together, but just more side by side than really played together, as IT Takes Two marked every second, and even if, then the gameplay is more aware of as astonishing.

You fight against space soldiers by one player has to switch off their protective shields so that the other can harm them. On a crazy chase, one player controls a flying Delorean while the other operates the gun tower. And then there are several of these scenes where one player has to open a goal so that the other can. Everything is still great, no question, but no longer awesome. Hazelight has been playing in a league since it Takes Two that has become almost unreachable for herself.

The best level in video game history

Most players won't bother that. On the contrary, I suspect that Split fiction should even like it better than IT Takes Two, precisely because it is more impressive because it is playfully relying more on action than it is puzzled and anyway: because sci-fi and fantasy are more pleasant than the sentimental Romcom frame act of the predecessor.

And last but not least, because Split fiction is still going up in his second half. And really! I'll say it again so that it becomes clear: really. In capital letters. Suddenly the developers solve the handbrake of their creativity and fire every second with ingenious ideas that you immediately forget the very ordinary start of the game and miss it as a start for the big final sprint.

Then you explore a weightless space station on the edge of a black hole, fight against a dentist in the candy country (of course, what else?!) And provides you with an epic battle against a black kite in the middle of a roaring orchan in the clouds. You turn into a millipede with two heads and have to maneuver it together through a burning volcano. And ...

I would like to list further, but that would only spoil you. Just believe me. And experience it yourself! Just so much: In my opinion, the final section is clearly one of the best video game levels ever. And I just leave that as a final sentence.