
I'll start with the good stuff, which requires a yadda-yadda-yadda of the plot: each player controls either the husband or the wife in an unhappy couple. I optimistically attended an online preview event last week to see what the fuss might be about, which allowed me to install and test the game's first two hours on my PC (and link up with Ars Technica's Kyle Orland as an online co-op partner). The footage seemed to turn a new Hazelight storytelling page in terms of a "rom-com" plot, while its always-cooperative gameplay looked bouncier and more action-packed. Trailers for the company's next game, March 26's It Takes Two (published by EA coming to Steam, Origin, PS4, and XB1), got my hopes up in both of those critical categories. But where 2013's Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons offered a refreshing morsel of co-op adventuring, 2018's A Way Out buried its most clever moments in an overwrought story and slow mechanics. The team at Swedish game studio Hazelight has spent nearly a decade making cooperative adventure games-and doubling down on the "co-op" tag by requiring two players for their games to work.
