Let’s face it. I died lots in Cut up Fiction once I performed it with a associate at a preview occasion held by Hazelight and Digital Arts. However I acquired proper again up and went again into the fray. And I actually loved my time with the split-screen co-op motion journey recreation.
Cut up Fiction, is popping out on the consoles and PC on March 6, 2025, for $50. However I acquired to strive it out for a number of hours and I additionally interviewed Josef Fares, founding father of the award-winning Hazelight studio, after taking part in the sport.
Sitting on the sofa with my associate, the sport began with the humor of a few e-book authors who instantly didn’t hit it off. You play as Mio and Zoe — two authors, one sci-fi, one fantasy. They’re like oil and vinegar in terms of personalities. However they’re thrown collectively into a typical disaster. Solely by working collectively — with one participant serving to the opposite — can they get out of it.
The 2 go to a simulation tech firm the place they’re promised a publishing deal. The writers turn out to be trapped in their very own tales after being hooked as much as a machine designed by an evil e-book “simulation” writer who needs to steal their inventive concepts.
To flee with their minds intact, they’ve to beat their variations to crash the system that holds them. The onerous half is studying to work collectively, Fares mentioned in an interview with GamesBeat. Mio isn’t notably pleasant, however she has an correct, skeptical intuition towards the corporate’s intentions. Zoe is much more trusting and is prepared to simply accept any indignity to get printed.
She fortunately steps onto a platform because the machine prompts a bubble that places her right into a sort of sleep stasis — and begins extracting the tales from her head. However Mio resists and needs to go away. The evil CEO received’t let her, struggles along with her and she or he falls into Zoe’s bubble. They fall into the identical fantasy world, with Mio showing inside Zoe’s story world by a glitch. They begin looking for their means out by following the glitch, which alternately takes them into completely different fantasy or sci-fi worlds.
The gameplay begins out pretty simple, however in every encounter/puzzle/combat, it took us a few tries to get the timing proper on preventing and motion. It wasn’t tremendous tough in that we by no means acquired caught for a very long time. However typically one participant needed to carry the opposite by a given combat scene.
It was early to study to play quick. I noticed that a lot of the interactivity was coloration coded. If there was a purple lettering, that was meant for Mio and so I needed to hit my proper bumper on my controller to make use of my grappling hook to fly by an area shortly. If it was inexperienced, it was meant for the opposite participant, Fares on this case, to make use of his controller to get Zoe to do one thing. You could possibly run on the partitions like in Titanfall, and you possibly can leap on a rail and slide like in It Takes Two.
A few hours in, there have been some harder fights the place it took us a very long time to get by the battles. We preferred how the issue ratcheted up progressively by the sport. The humor of the pig facet quest was gross in an enthralling means — Mio flies round with atomic-powered farts, whereas Zoe climbs by . I at all times preferred how each battle concerned Mio doing one factor and Zoe doing one other — and victory solely coming by cooperation in preventing the enemies.
As you may know, split-screen video games are very onerous to day. It’s like utilizing one recreation console to show two completely different video games without delay on the identical display screen. That pushes the computing assets to the restrict, and the developer has to ratchet down the standard of the graphics to maintain the twin body charges up. Happily, with the animated model of the sport, the standard seems fairly good, as it’s constructed on Epic Video games’ Unreal Engine 5.
Hazelight additionally has plenty of veterans engaged on the sport. Fares began with Brothers: A Story of Two Sons, a shifting story of two brothers. Hazelight adopted that up A Approach Out (about two prisoners in a jailbreak) in 2018. In 2021, Hazelight received Recreation of the 12 months for the split-screen recreation It Takes Two, a couple of couple on the verge of divorce. I’ve performed every recreation, however have but to get to the tip of It Takes Two. Alongside the best way, Hazelight saved working with EA Originals, they usually have the formulation down and a uncommon capacity to inform a narrative that’s each shifting, humorous and stuffed with gameplay originality.
Cut up Fiction’s has an array of ever-changing mechanics that retains each gamers on the sting of the sofa. Each Mio and Zoe have to acknowledge the scenes from their tales that the simulation is visualizing as digital worlds. And so they must work their means by the plush fantasy areas and sci-fi skylines.
It’s important to do issues like rework your self with a button push right into a fish to swim by a fantasy stream. Zoe has to make use of a magnetic arm to fetch containers and throw them at attacking flying police vehicles. Mio has to enter shut fight with troopers and hack away with a cybernetic sword. They must journey on hoverboards by desert sands and surf round sand sharks from one thing like Dune. I’m conscious there shall be extra surprises within the gameplay however I’m not going to spoil them.
A part of the narrative attraction of the sport is that Mio and Zoe don’t get alongside at first, however they study they’re one another’s solely hope. The characters will change not directly alongside their journey. And so they must study extra about one another as they go alongside — and defeat issues collectively.
I requested Fares for those who would ever be capable of play as a human participant, paired with an AI character. Fares mentioned that will simply be a standard single-player recreation that wouldn’t be as enjoyable, as your AI associate can’t actually behave like an actual human.
“If it’s isn’t broke, don’t fix it,” he mentioned.
Is that this recreation going to be value $50? For certain. It’s a 15-hour recreation that thus far could be very entertaining. And it’s one other title that would win the ever-creative Hazelight plenty of awards.
Disclosure: EA paid my solution to the occasion for the aim of this preview.
