Can Hazelight and Josef Fares strike gold once again?

Embrace mind-blowing moments as you’re pulled deep into the many worlds of Split Fiction, a boundary-pushing co-op action adventure from the studio behind 2021 Game of the Year Winner, It Takes Two. Mio and Zoe are contrasting writers – one writes sci-fi and the other writes fantasy – who become trapped in their own stories after being hooked up to a machine designed to steal their creative ideas. They’ll have to rely on each other to break free with their memories in-tact, working together to master a variety of abilities and overcome diverse challenges while jumping between sci-fi and fantasy worlds in this unexpected tale of friendship. Split Fiction is a unique action-adventure experience that keeps you on the edge of your couch with unexpected moments. One minute you’re taming adorable dragons and the next you’re fighting as cyber ninjas, escaping terrifying trolls, or dodging hover cars thrown by a robotic parking attendant. It’s weird, it’s wild, and it’s designed to be shared. Grab your co-op partner and get ready to overcome any obstacle thrown your way.

A Way Out and It Takes Two are brilliant games in their own right, I loved playing through them fully with my now ex-partner of 12 years, so playing Split Fiction has been a bittersweet experience. This is nothing to do with the game itself, that itself is fantastic and I highly recommend it. This is the first of Hazelight’s games where I haven’t had my other half to be Player 2 and the memories we shared on A Way Out and It Takes Two were special, so it was tough to get through with an online partner instead of one beside me.

I apologise for dumping all that on you, I just thought I had to give you some context as to what it’s been like for me playing it from the get-go. Now let’s look at the game itself…

Split Fiction lets you play as either Mio or Zoe, two aspiring writers hooked up to a machine to steal their ideas. You’ll be switching between sci-fi and fantasy locations throughout and the whole thing is absolute chaos. Sublime, beautiful chaos.

It was always going to be tough to follow up It Takes Two, but Split Fiction surpasses it in every fashion, at least that’s how I feel personally. It handles like a dream too with smooth controls and has a few extra bells and whistles in terms of visual fidelity and framerate for those with a PS5 Pro. I was able to test this and can say it looks a lot better than the standard PS5 version.

I love how the gameplay changes depending on the situation. It feels like a love letter to all classic games and you never know what twist is coming in terms of the level or the story. It keeps you guessing all the way and I know I will definitely be replaying it a good few times until Hazelight’s next masterpiece.

The visuals are stunning with a charming art style, fluid animation and detailed areas and characters throughout. Framerate is solid throughout and I didn’t encounter any glitches through my playthrough. The voice-acting is great and the soundtrack has one quality track after another. Load times are also minimal as you would expect.

The Verdict

Split Fiction may have come out at a pretty bad time for me personally, but I still found myself enjoying it immensely. It’s been a nice distraction and holds up as Hazelight’s best game yet. Could it be this year’s GOTY as well? Time will tell, but it’s a strong contender.

Score: 9.5