It Takes Two review: This is how it runs on PC | Laptop Mag

Our Verdict

It Takes Two is a brilliant marriage of ideas. Information technology boasts tons of superb puzzles, gorgeous worlds and heady mechanics, merely suffers from an unsatisfying catastrophe and inconsistent quality.

For

Incredible mechanical variety
Clever puzzles
Diverse setpieces
Charming art direction

Confronting

Anticlimactic narrative
Inconsistent gimmick quality

Laptop Mag Verdict

Information technology Takes Two is a brilliant matrimony of ideas. Information technology boasts tons of superb puzzles, gorgeous worlds and exciting mechanics, but suffers from an unsatisfying catastrophe and inconsistent quality.

Pros

+
Incredible mechanical variety
+
Clever puzzles
+
Diverse setpieces
+
Charming art management

Cons

-
Anticlimactic narrative
-
Inconsistent gimmick quality

Information technology Takes 2 is the essential co-op experience, presenting an affiliation of mechanics and designs originating from the nigh revered multiplayer genres. It refuses to allow the player remainder, barraging them with plenty of excellent ideas. Although non every i of these ideas stick, they e'er experience unlike enough to justify their beingness.

Both narratively and mechanically, the game expects the histrion to travel a mile a infinitesimal every bit they explore new worlds, gain new abilities and decipher clever puzzles. Every bit a cherry-red on height, all of this is set to an adorable backdrop featuring a bickering couple pushed along on their journey past an deadening volume of love.

A charismatic journey

Information technology Takes Two takes a head-butting, married couple, Cody and May, and throws them into an unwilling journey total of shenanigans that challenge them to repair their relationship. The two had decided to divorce, and although they seemed dead ready on this determination, their girl is unhappy with the circumstances. She pulls out a dearest therapy book and wishes on it, request the writer (Dr. Hakim) to assist the duo get friends again. She so takes two handmade figures of her parents and roleplays as if they loved each other over again, uncontrollably shedding tears that land directly on them.

Cody and May find themselves shrunk down into clay and wooden forms, respectively. This manifestly causes the couple to panic, simply nonetheless, they work together to reach their daughter and ask for help. However, Dr. Hakim, a living incarnation of the book with goofy arms and legs, causes an enormous amount of problem. He refuses to assist Cody and May in returning to their normal forms until they repair their relationship, inciting a series of wacky events that take the player through many unique settings.

Cody and May oftentimes banter and are frequently quite critical of each other, merely as the game progresses, we subtly see their rudeness diminish. And although they don't love each other anymore, these circumstances (and hatred for the obnoxious Dr. Hakim) creates a sense of kinship where they must piece of work together to get what they want. This leads to scenes that are heartbreaking; one in particular seemed every bit if it were straight out of a horror film. Nonetheless, to avoid spoilers, I won't go into further detail.

Variety of mechanics

It's hard to identify It Takes Two every bit belonging to a single genre, every bit it can be a puzzler, platformer, racer, third-person shooter, stealth game, hack-and-slash, isometric dungeon crawler, fighter, or flight simulator.

The puzzle aspect of Information technology Takes Ii is the about prominent, as Cody and May receive a designated gadget depending on the surface area they're exploring. These commonly synergize quite well, and are necessary for the gauntlet of puzzles nowadays within each environment.

It Takes Two review: This is how it runs on PC — (Image credit: EA)

For example, throughout the Clocktower chapter, Cody gains the ability to modify time while May can speedily teleport to clones of herself. With this, Cody plays a supportive role to assist May in progressing through the level. In another affiliate, May receives a hammer, which allows her to destroy obstacles and activate buttons that movement platforms. Cody finds a projectile nail that lets him keep those platforms in place or create swivel points for May to swing across with her hammer. And when Cody gets a sap gun that lets him spew goop onto enemies, May receives a flame-propulsion rifle that lets her detonate that sap. Cody and May unlock plenty more of these abilities as they travel throughout the chapters.

To peak it all off, at that place are 25 mini-games y'all can compete against your friend in, including chess, volleyball, musical chairs and snowball fights. To avert spoilers, I won't reveal every single gimmick in It Takes Two, but with xiii hours of play fourth dimension, the amount of diverse ideas are undeniably impressive.

Fundamentally, the purpose of these mechanics makes the title of the game relevant: it takes two players to become anything done. The entirety of Information technology Takes Two relies on yous and your friend working together to effigy things out, equally a majority of abilities, battles and puzzles require synergy between Cody and May in order to emerge successful.

Some ideas piece of work better than others

Since It Takes Ii features a conglomeration of genres and ideas, it'south unsurprising that non all of them land. In particular, the tertiary-person shooting mechanics and dungeon-crawler portion never match up to the greatness of the platforming and puzzling segments.

The section where Cody attains a sap gun and May tin detonate that sap with her burglarize is fun, merely it's one of the less engaging parts of the game. Unlike other third-person shooters, the thespian is stuck with a single weapon as they battle through waves of killer wasps. This means most fights operate similarly, requiring a consistent use of the aforementioned strategy from the player to go along.

Notwithstanding, the battles practise become exciting again when new antagonists and bosses are introduced, as the Wasp Queen has engaging phases which require the thespian to jump over hazards, target weak spots, and slide across the field to dodge a terrifying amount of enemies trying to smash the duo. And players need to be careful with the Shield Wasp enemy, as their front end is immune to sap, which means May needs to act as a distraction as Cody positions himself behind the enemy and strikes.

The puzzle sections of this chapter are far improve. With the sap gun, Cody tin weigh down objects to assist May in traversing gaps, while May tin can detonate sap to destroy obstacles in their mode. For example, players will confront an obstruction involving viii locks keeping a lid in place. To keep, Cody needs to line upwards the sap along the side of the lid in a way that allows May to detonate all of them in a chain reaction. Notwithstanding, the sap gun isn't infinite, so Cody needs to exist careful in how he positions the liquid. Another department requires Cody to utilize his sap gun to move wheels that allow May to leap between them. Each puzzle feels different, yet about of the combat sections get old pretty rapidly when there aren't new elements to go along things fresh.

Information technology Takes Ii also has an underwhelming dungeon-crawler level. Although the existence of this idea is heady, it suffers from the aforementioned faux pas as the tertiary-person shooting portions: a lack of puzzles and a focus on repetitive gainsay sections. Thankfully, the level only lasts about ten minutes, but it's one of the weaker parts of the game.

Plenty of lovely environments

It Takes Two doesn't just present mechanical variety; it as well takes players on a rollercoaster as they explore dozens of various setpieces. Cody and May volition detect themselves battling wasps inside of a tree, flying mechanical birds around a clocktower, billowy atop pillow forts in space, skating around a town inside of a snowglobe, riding spiders throughout a lush garden, exploring the gates of heaven inside a violin, and much more.

All of these ideas are accompanied by staggering environmental detail and a gorgeous array of colors. While exploring the garden, there'due south an assortment of brown mushrooms, mossy stones, rich dark-green grass, corrupted tree bark, nuts that crack nether the player's feet, little insects that traverse clear paths, and oversized man-fabricated objects that provide a proper sense of calibration.

And when Cody and May take flight upon mechanical birds, the sight of dusky mist dancing around the lifeless forest contrasts beautifully with the soft light emanating from the clocktower'due south archway. This atmosphere is unsettling, but it likewise instills a desire to reach the safety of the light equally soon as possible.

Clever puzzles

Information technology Takes Ii isn't a hard puzzle game. In fact, only one time throughout the unabridged journey did my friend and I get stuck for more a few minutes. All the same, puzzles utilize each gimmick'due south mechanical foundation incredibly well, and because that both Cody and May need to piece of work together to get things done, finding solutions often feels satisfying.

Traversing hazardous obstruction courses that another histrion has control of is often hilarious. This creates an agreeable tension when one fails the other, and creates an fifty-fifty greater sense of kinship when they succeed. Even when a puzzle isn't remotely challenging, It Takes Ii oft wows with its cool awarding of each mechanic.

When Cody and May each receive ane one-half of a magnet, the two can actuate them at the same time to slam into one another and reach platforms that were otherwise inaccessible. Cody somewhen gets the ability to plow into plants, and every bit the couple effort and stealth past a few adorable moles in the garden, Cody transforms into the grass that May sneaks through. When the couple is falling to their doom, Cody unwinds time and tries to assist May in traversing a gauntlet of platforms to get to safety. All of these moments had me proverb, "Wow, that's absurd" out loud.

However, I do wish that Information technology Takes Two had more challenging puzzles that made total use of each mechanic in ways that really exam the player's skill and knowledge. These wouldn't take to be part of the entrada, instead interim as off-the-beaten-path side quests. Information technology could exist similar to the Helltower in the Clocktower chapter, which was a completely optional platforming challenge that took quite a scrap of fourth dimension to get done.

Anticlimactic finale

Although It Takes Two has charismatic protagonists, intense story twists and exciting pacing, its finale leaves a lot to be desired. To avoid spoiling the climax, I won't reveal exact details, but a major conflict is unveiled before long after the last chapter of the game. And when this happened, I assumed that players would take to trudge through another exciting world with new gimmicks and mechanics to resolve the problem.

However, this isn't the case. This plot indicate finds its resolution but a couple of minutes after it's actually revealed, which is strange considering information technology'southward the near important narrative beat in the game.

It's also quite strange how it's delivered to the players. Spoiler warning for the 2nd half of the story: Dr. Hakim sends Cody and May to four dissimilar worlds to find the pieces of a destroyed annotation that their girl wrote to them. This plot bespeak is delivered to the couple on this note, but but when they render to normal. If the game had delivered this disharmonize while they were nonetheless in clay and doll form, we could have experienced the exciting climax I was hoping for.

It Takes Two PC performance

Information technology Takes Two turned out to exist a bugless experience. At most, there were moments where it felt like the lock-on feature wasn't locking on properly, but this merely happened a few times in the Tree chapter. However, I had an issue with the game's performance.

It Takes Two'southward special effects caused stuttering on my PC (even with Furnishings Quality on Low). Dr. Hakim brings a ton of pinkish confetti with him whenever he teleports into a scene, and this is frequently when my PC would stutter. The existence of other effects, from gigantic explosions to magical abilities, would cause like issues.

It Takes 2 PC requirements

I tested It Takes Ii on my desktop, which is equipped with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 GPU with 4GB of VRAM and an Intel Core i7-6700K CPU. When I initially launched the game with all settings on High, the opening cutscene was full of stutters. After a bit of messing around, I played the game at 1080p with some settings on High, only for the most office, I kept near of them on either Medium or Low. With this set up-upward, I managed a pretty consequent 45-fifty frames per 2nd.

Quality presets tin be inverse betwixt Low, Medium and Loftier. This alters the quality of textures, shadows, details, effects, shaders and postal service-processing. Anti-Aliasing can be switched between FXAA, Temporal AA, MSAA 2x and MSAA 4x. Anisotropic filtering tin too be put at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, or none. Frame rates tin can get between 30, threescore, 120 or unlocked. There's also a slider available for resolution calibration, which goes from 50% to 200%. V-Sync is as well available.

The minimum requirements to run It Takes Two includes Windows viii.one or 10, an AMD FX 6100 CPU or Intel Core i3-2100T CPU, 8GB of RAM, AMD Radeon R7 260X GPU or Nvidia Geforce GTX 660 GPU and 50GB of costless storage space.

The recommended requirements to run It Takes Two includes Windows eight.1 or 10, an AMD Ryzen 3 1300X CPU or Intel Core i5 3570K CPU, 16GB of RAM, AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU or Nvidia Geforce GTX 980 GPU and 50GB of free storage infinite.

Verdict

Information technology Takes Ii is comparable to an amusement park. There are plenty of attractions to engage with, and while not all of them are excellent, the overall feel is enhanced thanks to the staggering number of diverse concepts. The game could non work without its variety, as some of the existing ideas would fall apartment if the player were expected to commit to them for more than an hr. On the other paw, some of the best gimmicks could take used further application, perhaps in the grade of optional challenges hidden throughout chapters.

Notwithstanding, the narrative needed an extra chapter to solidify the intensity of its finale. Revealing an unforeseen conflict that the couple resolve in merely a couple of minutes — with no gameplay in betwixt — makes the conclusion experience unearned.

Regardless, Information technology Takes Two is brimming full of creative puzzles, beautiful environments and unique mechanics. Information technology's one of the best co-op games out there, and it's a peachy pick for parties of two looking for a mode to spend xiii hours together.

Source: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/it-takes-two

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