Split Fiction Review: Hazelight does it again

Hazelight’s latest game continues the studio’s tradition of creating co-op adventures, specifically two-player co-op, where each player controls one of the story’s two protagonists. A Way Out from 2018 had the players take on the role of two people escaping from prison. 2021’s It Takes Two featured married partners learning to work together after being turned into dolls, and went on to win Game of the Year in 2021. In Split Fiction, the protagonists are Zoe and Mio, two authors hoping to get published. They sign up for a “publishing deal” with a mysterious tech company. The two of them end up transported into the virtual reality of their stories, jumping back and forth between science fiction and fantasy stories they have each written throughout the years, chasing down a glitch and finding a way out of the simulation.

Split Fiction is not meant for one player, you will need to find someone else willing to play with you. Fortunately, both of you don’t have to buy the game. One of you can invite the other to play online via Friend’s Pass. For the first time, this invite is available across platforms. That means even if you’re playing on PlayStation, you can invite a friend to join from Steam or Xbox, and vice versa. They make this game easy to play with your friends, the challenge only starts once you get into the game.

Overall, Split Fiction is a lot of fun. No one is making games like Hazelight these days. The characters can be a little annoying at times, and there are random difficulty spikes that can get frustrating for experienced and inexperienced gamers alike. Looking at you, game show bomb toss side quest. But overall it’s a fun concept that is executed quite well. This game is like a love letter to pop culture. As a cyber ninja on a futuristic motorbike, Mio does the Akira slide. Every platforming challenge and puzzle feels like it is inspired by and builds on other games. Even one cut scene felt like it could have been cut from an episode of Red vs Blue. At one point I turned to my partner, who has only played a handful of modern video games, and said “after this, you’re going to be playing other games and saying ‘This is just like that level in Split Fiction!’”

A Story Within A Story

As a writer, in particular someone who enjoys writing fiction alongside the occasional game review, this premise immediately caught my eye. The concept of stepping into the fully-realized world of your story is enticing. While it’s not my story, I can at least live vicariously through the characters and appreciate their experiences. The story follows two unpublished authors, I only say that because it keeps coming up in dialogue. They arrive at a prestigious publishing company, expecting a deal to publish their books. Instead, they are asked to stand in a circle around a mysterious machine, which slowly suspends people in bubbles one by one. The last person to be suspended, Mio, is suspicious, and decides to back out at the last minute. The tech CEO running the machine tries to stop her, resulting in her falling into Zoe’s bubble. Fun fact: the two main characters are named after Hazelight Studios’ director Josef Fares’ daughters.

The game kicks off with a bang, both Mio and Zoe don’t know what’s happening as they jump back and forth between their stories. Eventually, they are able to break a small hole in their virtual world and hear through the crack that the company is trying to steal their stories. To break out of the simulation, they must complete their own stories, find glitches, and expand the crack in reality to escape. Mio is more closed off, wanting to get through the stories quickly and get this over with, while Zoe is more lighthearted, and is interested in learning the backstory behind Mio’s writing to get a better sense of what to expect. This causes them to constantly butt heads in the beginning. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is a story worth experiencing on your own.

As long-time writers, both characters have written various stories throughout their life, and they soon realize that the machine is tapping into more than just the one novel they submitted to this publishing company. The overall narrative jumps back and forth between major arcs of science fiction (Mio’s stories) and fantasy (Zoe’s stories). Once they reach the conclusion of a story, they find a glitch, learn more about what’s happening in the real world, and then jump into the other genre. There are occasional excursions to get a break from the current genre for a short time, but more on that later.

Overall, this story works well. It’s not the most groundbreaking, and maybe the most fantastical part of all is that a publishing company has the budget to create some sort of memory-accessing machine. Mio and Zoe have some good back and forth, and it’s fun to hear them comment directly on the story, since in a way, Mio and Zoe are players too, experiencing this story in a similar way to the ones holding the controllers. It’s a great excuse for action and adventure, and the game does a great job of delivering on that strong premise.

A Little of This, A Little of That

If I had to put a genre on this, which is tough, it would be action adventure. To get more granular, most of this game involves some level of 3D platforming, so you could call it an action platformer. But there’s also third-person shooting, puzzles, 2D platforming, driving, space ship flying, rhythm games, and nearly every kind of challenge you could include in a video game. There was even one puzzle that reminded me of the old 2D Pokémon ice puzzles. Every level introduces new abilities, but many of the basics stay the same, such as double jump, dash, wall running, and grappling hook. The different genres are always recognizable, even within different stories. You’re never going to be mixing up a Zoe story with a Mio story. They also have some general principles that we noticed while playing. The science fiction stories have more challenging platforming and mechanical controls like shooting and driving. While the fantasy sections feel generally more collaborative and involve more puzzles. The best part of this game is that even after putting double-digit hours, every moment of gameplay feels fresh. This is an impressive achievement for any game, let alone one that has the sometimes lightning quick pace that Split Fiction can have in the right moments, when the flow is flowing.

Perhaps one of my only complaints with Split Fiction is that there are random and unexpected difficulty spikes that can get frustrating. Towards the end of the cyber ninja arc, the level started to drag. My partner and I were getting tired of the sci-fi aesthetic, frustrated with what seemed like unfair challenges, and ready to move on to fantasy for something fresh. This was due to a few things. There was one level in the cyber ninja arc that involved driving a car through a crowded urban environment. We must have spent half an hour or more on that section, which, if done right the first try, would be over in about a minute or two. This was followed shortly by another half hour trying to speed across rooftops on a cyber-cycle, crashing into walls, falling off edges, and more. Most of the time, progress is steady, but depending on your level of video game experience and skill, you might run into sudden and unexpected walls where you get stuck for longer than you’d probably like. Add in that this is a co-op game, which often means you are relying on each other to complete a task, and it can get frustrating quickly.

Thankfully, there are “excursions,” or side missions. These will pop up periodically, always announced by the characters when one is nearby. These are optional opportunities to jump into the opposite genre for a while. They don’t usually have anything to do with the main story, since they are optional, but they can be fun and unexpected at their best, while long and frustrating at their worst. There’s no telling what you’re about to jump into with any given side mission, so be ready for anything.

One of the earliest ones ended up being a futuristic game show where we had to complete 3D platforming challenges while throwing an active bomb back and forth. If you held it too long, it exploded. If you failed to catch it, it exploded. We must have spent well over an hour in this side mission. After each challenge I said out loud: “that has to be the last one,” only to see another one start to load up. I said that exact quote out loud three times before we finally reached the last level. Which we didn’t complete that night. We tried again the next morning and with fresh minds, were able to finally complete this grueling side mission. When we were pushed back out into the main fantasy story, it took a few minutes of reorienting before we were able to get back on track and remember what was going on with the main story. My partner had actually forgotten that the game show was just a side mission. Later on, we came across a kite race side mission that involved us racing through the air through floating rings, a classic video game mechanic. That side mission was plenty of fun and took no more than ten minutes. So there’s no telling what you’re getting yourself into with these optional excursions.

So, all I’ll say is, if you’re going to jump into a side mission, be ready for anything. And know that you can always leave. They are optional. Don’t sacrifice friendships over this game, especially not the optional side missions.

Hazelight Knows What It’s Doing

This review is based on the PC version of Split Fiction. It’s a modern game, and my PC is not the most modern machine, so it would get loud and stutter here and there. But overall, it ran quite smoothly. Visually, this is a delightful game. With such varied environments between the two different genres, and every side mission having its own twist on the aesthetics, it’s amazing how great it all looks. So many games have a similar aesthetic and look throughout the whole playtime, so it was incredible to experience something that changed things up so drastically so regularly. No section felt like it was empty or lacking detail. Turning every corner and starting every new story felt as fresh as the constantly refreshing game mechanics.

We also played locally, so a lot of the experience was in split screen, which is something I’ve unfortunately gotten un-used to with modern gaming. But you would be surprised how often the two halves merge into a single screen, keeping even the layout of the screen fresh. Overall, as long as you have a big enough screen, it’s not something to worry about. For my review, I connected my computer to the TV so we wouldn’t have to crowd around my much smaller monitor.

Split Fiction is the first time I’ve felt the need for a version of the word “cinematic” but made specifically for video games. This isn’t trying to be like a movie, it’s a video game through and through. Certain moments make me stop and appreciate the visuals and the framing. Running along the same platform, top and bottom thanks to gravity shift, with the neon sci-fi city glowing in the background. This is what video games on this level should aspire to look like.

Is Split Fiction Game of the Year Material?

Yes and no. The follow up to Game of the Year winner It Takes Two was always going to be difficult. Thankfully, Hazelight did not shy away from trying to live up to that success. But will Split Fiction be able to live up to the same level of recognition? While Split Fiction is great, I’m not so confident that this one will take the highest award this year. There’s a lot of competition already, Monster Hunter Wilds is proving itself a force to be reckoned with, and there’s still the potential for Grand Theft Auto 6 to launch later this year.

Split Fiction is doing something different than It Takes Two, and it excels at that. Split Fiction’s gameplay constantly feels fresh and engaging, and it’s always doing something new and exciting visually. The dialogue and story are solid too. But I think where It Takes Two stands just above its follow-up, is the originality. Split Fiction is amazing for juggling two genres and having one large story track through so many smaller ones, but so much of it is at least reminiscent of something familiar, sci-fi and fantasy that has been seen before. It Takes Two, on the other hand, felt much more like something completely original. Ultimately, that could be what people remember when voting season rolls around at the end of this year.

But don’t let that stop you from checking out this amazing game. I believe Split Fiction could easily earn a nomination, while it’s not perfect, it’s one of the most visually stunning and consistently fun and engaging games I’ve played in a long time. Plus, video games only get better when you have a friend to play them with.