There’s just something special about playing a game with a friend in split screen isn’t there? Perhaps it’s nostalgia and the fact it’s done so infrequently, but whatever it is it always feels unique. With Split Fiction, Hazelight studios has dialled that feeling up to and delivered one of the most memorable games in modern times.
Known for making games that are only playable in co-op, Hazelight has been quickly rising the ranks as a top studio in gaming. The excellent It Takes Two really solidified them as such, and Split Fiction is looking to build upon that success. And boy did they ever.
A Story Well Woven
From the opening cutscene Split Fiction will likely have your attention. You play as Mio and Zoe, two aspiring writers who have found a publisher who is willing to publish one of their books. The 2, who don’t know each other, along with a few others are headed to the publisher to hear what they have to say. Mio is a sci-fi writer, Zoe a fantasy writer.
When they meet with the publisher they quickly realize this isn’t any normal publishing deal. Rader, the companies CEO, instead shows them a giant machine and promises that it will bring their stories to life in a revolutionary way. While all the writers seem fine with this and go along with it, Mio isn’t sure and resists. As she tries to walk away things get heated and she ends up in the same pod as Zoe rather than her own.
With the girls trapped in the same machine their confusion quickly turns into a realization that their ideas are being stolen by Rader and the machine. They find glitches in this virtual world and device they need to reach all the glitches to break free or the machine and save their ideas.
While the real world is the backdrop of the story, it’s the virtual world that carries the bulk of it. Each world in the games 7 chapters is vastly different from the next, altering back and forth between Mio and Zoe’s realms. The girls will get to know each other and learn the inspiration behind each of their stories.
The story bounces between hilarious and very grim and serious. I found myself laughing and chuckling multiple times throughout the game and choked up just as much. About halfway through you can probably put the pieces together yourself, but even in doing so it still hit me like a ton of bricks. Trust me when I say this, let your guard down and truly enjoy this narrative. It will be worth it.
There are also 12 optional side stories and I highly suggest you play every one of them. If you miss them you won’t miss much in terms of the main story, but each level is so unique and special in their own way.
Perfecting Every Type Of Gameplay
Have you ever played a game of any genre or style and thought “this would be cool as insert genre here”? Well Split Fiction changes up its style at every turn. One minute you are platforming up a tower the next you are in a third person shooter and 5 minutes later you are in an action-adventure.
At its core I would say the game is mostly a mashup between puzzling platformer and action-adventure game. Probably half of the roughly 12 hour run time is spent doing some kind of platforming. The beauty of the platforming is how varied it is, and that’s really the strength of the game as a whole. You will spend plenty of time learning new ways to do things and as soon as you master it you will have moved on to the next game style.
As mentioned though the strength of the game is just how varied it is. You will never think a specific aspect of the gameplay is dull or overstayed it’s welcome. I cannot tell you how often myself and my playing partner just stopped and said “how the hell did they even think of this.” That’s just how special the game is.
Of course the star of the show though is the co-op, the game is co-op only after all. 90% of the game you need to coordinate and work together with your partner. A lot of games are co-op in the sense of playing with someone but not necessarily needing to work with who you are playing with. With Split Fiction everything is built with teamwork in mind and it works to perfection.
If you want to nitpick 1 thing about the gameplay it’s that it can at time be too easy. Not so much the gameplay itself as we dies plenty of times, it’s just that the checkpoints are so frequent if you die there’s not much of a penalty. While I personally was fine with that I could see the odd person complaining.
Easter Came Early
A big part of what helps make the gameplay so varied is just the sheer amount of Easter eggs in Split Fiction. It’s like everyone at Hazelight was made to listen to every Game rap album on repeat during the development (if you know you know) and the inspiration was to drop as many shoutouts into the game as possible. I didn’t keep count but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was over a hundred Easter eggs in Split Fiction.
Some are pretty obvious, especially for previous Hazelight games, some not so much. And they span across so many different franchises, both movies and games. If you think of a popular series, there’s a good chance there’s a tip of the cap to it in Split Fiction.
I suppose some might get annoyed by that and say where’s the originality, but honestly I thought the opposite. It felt like Hazelight was simply appreciating history of the art of video games and giving them all some love.
Who’s The Boss?
Of course with a game as varied as Split Fiction you can bet there’s a ton of unique, thrilling bosses to fight. If felt like every chapter had at least 3 or 4 bosses and thanks to the back and forth between sci-fi and fantasy settings they also were kept fresh.
Pretty much every boss needs that required teamwork to get it done. They are all designed well and strike a great balance of being difficult without being too difficult. Too often boss fights of this nature can fall into that space where you can die so many times but you find that way to cheese the fight. While the bosses have their set patterns it’s not like you will feel like “ok that move is coming I’ll go to this spot and I’m safe”.
To that end though the small nitpick you can have is that most of the bosses do follow a similar pattern. Attack, leave an opening, attack again, leave another opening. The move sets are at least varied enough to make it feel like it’s not much of an issue though.
A Technical Marvel
Lastly I have to talk about just how good this game is from a technical standpoint. The game is so polished we didn’t encounter a single bug or glitch. In 2025 that’s almost unheard of, especially for split screen.
What I really need to highlight here though is the actual tech behind the game. How they can pull off such a technically intense game without a hitch needs to be studied. Without spoiling anything the final chapter alone will have you saying holy shit to yourself on multiple occasions.
Conclusion
A couple times per generation a game comes along and flies close to the proverbial sun that is perfection. While no game can be truly perfect Split Fiction is about as close as they come. The backdrop of the games narrative is unique and the story told between Mio and Zoe will bring many to tears. The voice actors themselves deliver an award winning performance as well.
Its gameplay is second to none. Most games have a hard time mastering 1 genre, yet Hazelight has mastered seemingly every genre in a single game, doing it all in split screen no less. All of this packed into a tight 10-12 hour package that never gets repetitive or boring.
All in all Split Fiction is one of the greatest games I’ve ever experienced and that’s no hyperbole. In a year of stacked competition it will be hard to beat for game of the year, and for my money it’s the best game of the decade.
Split Fiction was played on Xbox Series X. We’d like to thank EA for providing us with a code for purpose of this review.
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