Split Fiction

Just, wow. Split Fiction relentlessly and continuously throws you into dazzling, delightful, and sometimes clever scenarios. It's like 20 fully realized and highly polished games all wrapped into one. You barely have time to be amazed by one spectacular level crammed with gorgeous scenery and novel gameplay before you soar into the next one, which will amaze you in an entirely new way.

Yes, it is quite fast paced! But there are also many opportunities to slow down, solve some puzzles, and explore. Indeed, the environments are so alluring that I often found myself wishing it were an open-world RPG and that I could just wander around. Alas, there's not much exploration here: This is an on-rails directorial experience. And that's OK, because boy does the team have a ride in store for you.

I was doubtful that Hazelight Studios could top their wonderful It Takes Two. And I was skeptical that they could reuse the split-screen co-op formula without making it feel, well, formulaic. My expectations have been exceeded and then some.

There's a design philosophy that is about running a tight ship, staying focused, and minimizing the feature set in order to maintain a coherent and polished game experience: "less is more". Hazelight didn't get that memo. It seems that every good idea made it into the game, and never half-heartedly. All greenlit elements got full attention and comprehensive treatment. Here we have proof that sometimes "more is more". It's too bad that so few game studios can pull this off, but I am grateful that we have Hazelight.

Buy it and get a friend to play with you—as with It Takes Two, only one person has to own the game, which is an astonishingly generous policy in an industry that charges kids $20 for differently colored horse armor.

Split Fiction is fun, exciting, and stacked. It's very rare that I replay games, but I just know I will want to do this one again.