Split Fiction: the new co-op adventure from Hazelight Studios and Josef Fares that points to be a GOTY contender

Josef Fares' basis as a director has always been the presence of two characters on the screen. A formula that has evolved and refined over the course of his games, combining cinematic narratives with fantastic elements. His most recent title, It Takes Two, not only came to unite players in a time when distance was everything, but also prevailed against great competitors with already consolidated formulas during The Game Awards 2021. Expectations are high for his next project with Hazelight Studios, and Split Fiction more than delivers. This time Fares surprises with a cooperative experience that impresses. And because it couldn’t be otherwise, this is a collaborative opinion.

Your story or mine?

Split Fiction" is a split-screen cooperative action-adventure game that tells the story of Mio and Zoe, two writers trapped in a company that wants to appropriate the most valuable thing they possess: their creativity. Mio, a city girl with sci-fi ideas, and Zoe, a young country girl with a passion for high fantasy, are sucked into a machine that allows them to live inside their own stories. To escape, they must work as a team while unraveling the traumas and inspirations that brought their worlds to life.

As with the studio’s previous titles, such as A Way Out or It Takes Two, the game forces us to play with someone else. Whether on the same console or remotely, Split Fiction splits the screens and takes us on a journey that mixes stories and scenarios, focusing not only on these worlds, but on their characters. Depending on the story, the mechanics of our characters change, with activities such as being Cyberninjas in a cyberpunk dystopian world where even the parking meters have to be finished, to confrontations with orcs attacking a medieval village, to battles against giant robots. And that is just the beginning.

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The mechanics are intuitive, fun and creative. Both Mio and Zoe have different abilities that try to complement each other, at the same time demonstrating the maturity that Hazelight Studios has achieved in this type of mechanics. Split Fiction is a game that requires some coordination from the player and can become very intuitive for connoisseurs of the genre patented by Fares. In our test we decided to play without microphones and except for some details, the years of experience served to avoid puzzles and to be able to move forward. As expected, as the game progresses, the mechanics become more complicated and communication becomes essential to coordinate strategies and progress through the story.

The game is to some extent not so obvious with the clues, which can cause problems if you play with someone who may be starting with the theme of video games, but that does not make it inaccessible. Perhaps in this case, if there is one experienced player and another who does not know Hazelight Studios games, we highly recommend using a voice chat if you are playing remotely. Something to note is that we not only have a main story, but also some side quests that are hidden along the way with more specific mechanics. An example of this is Zoe’s first story, which gives us the opportunity to be pigs that propel themselves with the power of the rainbow that comes out of their butts.

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Something very well done is that the title sometimes breaks the fourth wall with references to real life. In order not to generate spoilers, we will only say that there is one based on the security procedures to access an account from a smartphone that will steal more than one smile from many. On the other hand, there are also parts where the solution of the puzzle depends entirely on a single person, or on the timing for one to let the other pass, which is something rarely seen and which the studio has mastered to perfection.

Playing together or at a distance

As is already a hallmark of the studio, Split Fiction allows you to play on the same platform with two controls or, if it’s more comfortable, at a distance. No matter how you play, the screen is always split so you can see what is happening with the other player, although there are certain sequences where they are unified, these moments denote the great creativity of its creators to balance the gameplay on a single screen.

One of the most interesting details is that we can now play separately, no matter what platform we are on. For this test, we had the opportunity to play on a PC (Steam), an ASUS Rog Ally X, as well as an Xbox Series X, and although at the beginning there were some lag problems between platforms, after the first stage everything was solved. It is also worth mentioning that the game will feature a friend pass, so you can invite another player to play with you.

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A visual and auditory experience

This installment uses the Unreal Engine 5 graphics engine and is very well adapted to all platforms, on the Xbox Series X side the title looks amazing in 4K at 60 FPS, but in the case of the PC version we had the opportunity to see it at its maximum graphical expression with the following configuration:

With this system we were able to play it in 4K resolution at over 120 FPS with the highest visual values, which allowed us to see the final version of this release. It is noteworthy that we also managed to run it on an ASUS Rog Ally X with the quality of the graphics on low at a resolution of 1280 x 720, but with the lowest power mode (13W) with these visual values in “normal” managing to maintain an average over 40 FPS, which is something perfectly playable for a laptop and that allows the battery to last much longer in these types of devices. In fact, we would dare to say that Split Fiction is also a game designed for this type of platform, since the experience with two of these devices is truly incredible.

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Going deeper into the animations, we can only say that despite keeping those “cartoonish” movements that take them away from hyper-realism, it presents extraordinary visuals that show the power of Unreal Engine 5, with very detailed textures and effects that take advantage of the graphics engine

Finally, the audio is very well done, giving you the feeling that everything you hear around you is what your character has. This is much more noticeable in Mio’s sci-fi sections, but Zoe’s fantasy worlds have their own thing going on as well.

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Split Fiction shows the maturity of Hazelight Studios in terms of mechanics, balancing creativity and intuition with flashy puzzles and sequences that require skill. However, the story, graphics, and dialog create an atmosphere that makes it a memorable game, and without a doubt we are looking at another strong candidate for video game of the year.

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