There are plenty of moments where trust and timing are essential, as one player pops out platforms for the other to hop onto, a second’s hesitation or mistakenly hitting the wrong platform means the other’s instant demise. Rather than settle for parity between the two dolls, many of the mechanics are asymmetrical, with each parent having a different job to do in order to win the day. The more frequent collaborative sections are just as involving. It Takes Two – it can get pretty meta (pic: EA) Meanwhile the hammer can thwack special buttons, shatter obstacles, and if you like, pound the other doll into the ground. From those two simple tools, dozens of brilliantly engineered challenges flow, with the nail used as a fulcrum to swing across wide gaps, or to hold portals open while the plucky dolls dash to the other side. In one, your miniature heroes are armed with a claw hammer and a throwable nail. That goes for the bosses too, which reinvent everyday objects as titanic baddies to be dispatched in imaginatively cooperative ways.Įach area you encounter adds its own mechanics.

Whether it’s fighting heavily militarised squirrels and their enemies, the wasps, in a sprawling hollow tree, or playing through space levels with their occasional zero-G and size-changing mechanics, everything is made more exciting than the real world alone would allow. Seeing everything from a mouse-like perspective lends each realm a Brobdingnagian feel that’s enhanced by the wonderfully detailed environments, each of which has been amped up into a fantastical setting. Picking a parent-doll each, players leap straight into the action, which takes place in various rooms and areas around the family’s house and garden.

It takes two split screen