Four years and 20 million copies sold later, Hazelight Studios is back with its highly-anticipated co-op follow-up to It Takes Two, Split Fiction. Well, it will be when it’s released this Thursday. The reviews for Split Fiction are in though, and they spell very good news for those of you hoping Hazelight was able to carry over some of that It Takes Two magic and build on it in its next game.
Not only have Split Fiction’s review scores managed to reach the lofty heights that It Takes Two’s achieved in 2021, but at the time of typing this, they’ve managed to surpass them. Split Fiction is currently sitting on an 89 on Metacritic (It Takes Two eventually settled on 88), while its OpenCritic score is a full three points better than its It Takes Two equivalent at 91.
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Split Ficiton Gets A Fake “Friend Edition” For Anyone Who Needs A Player Two
A special edition of the game that comes with someone to play it with. If only.
Our very own Jade King has been playing Split Fiction and awarded it a four out of five in her review. Our review not only notes that Split Fiction pulls from all of the Hazelight co-op games to have come before it, but labels it the crescendo of the studio’s impressive arc.
Split Fiction is Hazelight at the pinnacle of couch co-op. It tells a story all about the power of human imagination while throwing us into levels that keep you guessing right until the very end.
Elsewhere, Split Fiction has been awarded a fair few perfect scores, hence it hitting the lofty Mighty rating on OpenCritic. GameSpot has given it a ten out of ten, dubbing it “a remarkable love letter to creativity, video games, and companionship”. Push Square also deemed it worthy of a perfect score, calling it Hazelight’s best game yet, while DualShockers has crowned the studio the best in the modern day co-op business in its nine out of ten review.
Whether you were sold on Split Fiction based on your time with It Takes Two, its trailers, or now that you’ve seen the reviews, you don’t have long to wait until you and your player two can try it out for yourselves. Split Fiction launches on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Thursday, March 6, 2025, so less than 48 hours from now.
Best of all, the Friend Pass feature Hazelight introduced with It Takes Two is not only back, it’s better than ever. Split Fiction cannot be played alone. You need a friend, whether they’re sat alongside you playing locally or playing online elsewhere. However, only one of you needs to own the game and the other can play via Split Fiction’s Friend Pass. The improvement comes via its cross-platform functionality, meaning even if you own the game on PS5 but your potential Split Fiction buddy only has a Series X, you can still play the same copy of the game together.
Action
Adventure
Sci-Fi
Fantasy
- Released
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March 6, 2025
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Hazelight Studios