Today we go from an indie game I'd bet money none of you had ever heard of before my blog, to a game that won Game Of The Year a few years ago at the Game Awards. It be like that!
So funny story, I actually just finished It Takes Two on Tuesday night. I picked it up because it looked like a cute couples game and sat down with my partner to give it a go. How was it? It was a fucking RIDE.
First off, I totally get why this won GOTY, the storytelling and gameplay are both incredible and this is the best couples game I've ever come across. You play as a couple that have just announced their divorce to their child, and then proceeded to get shrunk down into the size of dolls. The goal is to get back to their bodies, and their lives, but they must learn to rekindle their relationship along the way.
This game is chock full of puzzles and all sorts of gameplay elements and gameplay styles. Holy hell, the variety of gameplay styles, lmao. There's several different racing stages. There's stealth sections where one player controls the terrain the other player walks on to avoid making any sort of noise. There's a section where one of you flies a biplane where the other fucking plays Smash Bros with a squirrel on top of this plane. (This is the only time the entire game we had to switch roles for a few moments, since I'm good at Smash and she could barely even get the controls down before getting her ass beat.)
The environments are gorgeous, oh my god. There's a lush garden. There's a child's play area filled to the brim with toys. There's a kingdom filled with stuffed animals. The one that was so good it forced me to raise this a couple spots, though, was the bright, neon colored world where you travel through various instruments and other musical landscapes. Everywhere you look, there's something new and very cool to see.
There's plenty of fun minigames and challenges you can do against eachother which add even MORE gameplay styles. There's a shooting gallery. There's even MORE races. There's a goddamn CHESSBOARD. I'm still tilted over that one since I accidentally threw with seconds to go. WHOOPS!
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this game and would highly recommend it, assuming you have a person to play with irl (since you CAN play online but like fuck that)!
...actually, there is one more thing I need to talk about with this one. Yep, it's time to get serious.
To put it very bluntly: There's a segment at the game's climax that hurt me, in a way I didn't even know I was capable of being hurt. I won't say what exactly happened, but it broke me. Story-wise, it is made very EXPLICITLY clear that what you are doing is very fucked up, and that you are in the wrong for doing it.
A shot was taken directly at the most vulnerable side of me: My inner child. The child that is still trying to cope with a lot of very fucked up things from when I was young, and who I haven't really been showing much love to either. A scene that probably wouldn't affect most people, including my partner, shattered me to the point where I had to put this game down for a good month to process everything. Why I was feeling the way I was, why I was able to be broken as hard as I was at that moment, and where to go from here.
Not only did this game bring me closer together with my partner and help improve communication (not that we were struggling with it), this game got me back in touch with myself and reminded me to love myself, including the bits and pieces of me that I've neglected.
