Brendan: Hello, Nick.
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NIC: Blendy! In my review, why are you here? What is this, is it some sort of division fiction? Some kind of cooperative adventure by Hazelight? You’re here so it’s okay: Brendy, what is Brendy’s best split fiction?
Brendan: He had escaped the sci-fi gunship behind a stolen bike. I’m sure they felt it was cool to pilot us between missiles and firefights. I couldn’t see any of it. I was too focused on clicking the “Accept” box on the usage scale screen. The futuristic security of our malicious bikes has begun. You were wrestling with the capture after the capture, you were driving fast and jumping across the skyscrapers as I was wrestling with the capture to stop us from exploding. I laughed the whole time.
NIC: My favourite bits involved pigs. You were a pig that could fly by fart, and I was a pig that could transform into a tall slinky. We then went through the meat grinder and popped out as sausages. We then had to bake ourselves as the last act of illness humiliation before being eaten by a giant child wiggling in some bread.
Brendan: I didn’t like it that way. That made me hungry though. Before going deeper, let me explain the basic setup. The two unpublished writers meet in an experimental brain scan session in a big, shady company. But no, the concise, introverted science fiction writer fell into the brains of boring, friendly fantasy writers. Each player takes control of the writer in subsequent puzzles, exploration, battles and boss battles. If you played previous games in the studio, you need two. I probably know what to expect.
NIC: Blendy successfully pulled the context lever to the side of the screen, allowing me to freely enter the detailed corridor. Great job! If only your cold sci-fi hearts hold the fantasy, and I appreciate me as a writer and person, then we might have a story of a trivial strange couple in our hands! What a good idea for video games.
Brendan: It’s a “video game.” Two words.
NIC: Anyway. You think you said the pig party was “too many whims” for you. There were also two whimsical pigs who grilled the third whimsical pig for a whimsical spit. However, I felt that much of the game was traditional and restrained, so that most of those Amanita style bits stood out to me. I long for novelty in everything, but what you’re getting here is each a massive emotional phor, an almost predictable set of set pieces.
Brendan: Yeah, the big idea is that the fantastic, futuristic story you are playing reflects some of the deeper trauma or problems our heroes face in real life. Mio’s troubles flowed into her cyberpunk debt story. Zoe’s childhood memories are the constant source of fantasy toes.
NIC: The best of these sets will give both players a different set of tools and help them overcome obstacles. My apes had to stomp flowers to clear the path for your fairies to fly. Your cool, sour spitting, flying dragons had to melt the metal, so my lame forest rolling dragons could hit the door. But most of the game felt like a simple 3D platformer. Instead of a ladder, they may be thrown across the roof inside a portal.
Brendan: I think it’s a very easy game in that it can burn for several nights with your partner or housemate. I don’t think it’s a game for either Warhammer McFadden or Tekken O’hara. But I laughed so amazingly at the slapstick nature of many deaths. And the recall was so generous and felt as much as the result of dropping one popcorn into the cinema.
NIC: Simplicity is in theory good to maintain momentum, but I don’t think it needs to be expressed through so many sections that I find obscure and interchangeable. I compared it to eating a sack of levels – chocolate bits you don’t know what flavor they have. The joy of the level is discovering whether you have toffee or raisins, nuclear waste, or anything you have when you chew. Everything from there was downhill. Split fiction is fun when introducing new, novel concepts – not when you have to plague that idea for ten minutes before you reach the next time.
Brendan: It’s definitely a novelty parade. Not only are you visiting the various sci-fi and fantasy stories that Zoe and Mio rely on their imaginations (not to mention the many side stories we skipped), but you’ve also been catapulted into a different genre of games with amazing frequency. Look, you’re in an R-type style shmup now. Wait, a family-friendly platformer with pork. To hurt it, now you have to explode through the encounter of multiphase metroid style bosses. Gravity shift and plays in the portal in the portal. There is a rhythm dance section with culturally indeterminate disco monkeys (he calls you “homei” and “habibi” in a two-minute space). It’s sometimes a very traditional third person shooter game. You once said that some bosses have a clear god of war 2 taste.
NIC: Punching the big creature in your eyes by repeatedly crushing the buttons will always remind you of the God of War. There are also plenty of sections that will swing between grapple points as things break down around you.
Brendan: In addition to this, there are plenty of watery references to other games and media. Easter eggs from the Lord of the Rings scene, Deku Tree of Zelda and Barrel Blast scene in Donkey Kong Country. It’s very accessible.
NIC: Ah, Deku Tree. This was a big old orc in one of Zoe’s stories. I don’t remember her name, but I remember Mio saying it was “a strange name for a leaf tree.” After that, I spent 10 minutes trying to discover it we I was an idiot who didn’t know what “leaf trees” were or why someone would record those words in that order.
Brendan: Ah, the leaves tree. Like a furry cat. Or rocks. Uninspired dialogue is particularly painful for us as real writers, with the characters being poor portraits of their careers. Hazellight has an escape clause that says that whenever something in the story is a bit crap, “these gals are laid back and bad writers.” But frame stories are also somewhat implied, and if you’re going to make the writer poor with your own craft, why not make it a standard awful? Why not do Garth Marenghi or something? But Mio and Zoe are merely scribes of numbers scribes, trapped in numbers narratives (in another number narrative).
NIC: Alan Wake is all about the atmosphere throughout, through the atmosphere of Mr. Men Morality. I also never co-sign Brendy’s claim that I am a “real writer.” But yes, I think we spent some time guessing the intent of the game again. Are they supposed to be bad writers? Is that part of a joke? When the main villain claims he is a good guy, is it actually clever, and the writer says, “Oh, come on, he’s always saying he’s a good guy, what a cliché!” Obviously, if you’re wandering around the magical forest, you’ll need to learn how to forage herbs, but it might go easy with a deadly lampshade.
Story aside, I liked the bit where you obviously took a breather to ruin each other in a variety of ways. Or have a deathmatch. The part that winked at you: “We present this as a trust practice, but in reality you can bounce your mate’s head off the carpet and snap it around it.”
Brendan: This is another reason why I like the existence of games like this even if I’m not really interested. There was a chapter when it played as a big magic tree and suddenly controlled the entire forest environment. You can withdraw the spikes and expand the platform. As a great ape, I had to navigate the dangers and carnivorous flowers of your sacred forest. It’s full of moments when two players can exert a playful dig with each other.
Anyway, I think we’ve analyzed this a lot now. I felt you were getting tired of our misfortune. And this disparity is by no means a good thing when it comes to such couch cooperative games. But we both came to the agreement that yeah, it’s not our bag.
NIC: Despite my complaints, I can’t see anyone playing this with their peers and partners and leaving feeling wasted on the weekend. That’s as long as you keep it in the first place – I don’t think it would convince anyone who hasn’t yet joined Hazelite’s Schtick. And it’s not that I say, “This is a great video game and if you don’t rope someone to play with you, you’re missing out.” It’s not a generator of joy, it’s a facilitator of joy. It’s a fun bridge, not a fun gush. (Do you remember when I said I was a real writer?)
Brendan: I support that. You never call oak a “leaf tree.”
NIC: I think it actually says “leaf tree.”
This review is based on a review build provided by the publisher.