Split Fiction (Hazelight, 6th March 2025)

[Julius]

Hazelight's next co-op adventure is on the way!

Quote

Jump into mind-blowing moments and experience the many worlds of Split Fiction"", a boundary-pushing co-op adventure from the studio behind It Takes Two. Master a variety of abilities and overcome diverse challenges while jumping between sci-fi and fantasy worlds!

As always with Hazelight, only need one copy to play with a friend online. 

[Julius]

New trailer dropping on Monday at 17:00 GMT:

Still haven't decided if I'm pre-ordering this or what my plan is for it, but I know I'll definitely be trying to get to it this year. 

[Julius]

Reviews dropped the other day for this, and it's currently at 91 on Metacritic (77 reviews) and 90 on Opencritic (71 reviews). 

Some reviews for your perusal:

MinnMax also did their rapid-fire questions (carrying on the spirit from GI's old videos, of course) with Josef Fares and it was awesome:

Can't believe this is how I find out his brother is one of the senators at the Rebellion war table in Rogue One! 

And details on how to play co-op online with the Friend's Pass:

Sounds like Fares and Hazelight have once again crushed it – to my surprise, this is their first 90+ rated game (by critics) on MC and OC, is the second 90+ game of the year (after Monster Hunter Wilds last week), and is the highest rated game of 2025 so far.

We've got a long way to go, of course, but seems like they'll once again be in the running for GOTY. We've come a long way from "f*ck the Oscars", and yet it feels Fares and team have kind of backed all of that talk up. 

[Julius]

The game has received one of those rare (at least these days) glowing reviews from Digital Foundry:

Love to see it 

[WackerJr]

I don’t know whether it’s selling phenomenally or whether there’s a shortage of physical copies in the South of the UK, but everywhere I look is either sold out or a long delay for the disc version.  Amazon has a 2-week turnaround for delivery, my local game ran out of stock today, Argos, Smyths, etc all in a similar predicament in their stores!  I’ve managed to get a home delivery from Argos for early in the week.

I’m hoping it is selling well, as I loved It Takes Two and the reviews you’ve all mentioned are glowing.

[Julius]

57 minutes ago, WackerJr said:

I don’t know whether it’s selling phenomenally or whether there’s a shortage of physical copies in the South of the UK, but everywhere I look is either sold out or a long delay for the disc version.  Amazon has a 2-week turnaround for delivery, my local game ran out of stock today, Argos, Smyths, etc all in a similar predicament in their stores!  I’ve managed to get a home delivery from Argos for early in the week.

That's insane to hear, and in a good way I suppose! Seems like strong word of mouth/reviews + spiritual-ish successor to It Takes Two (which sold a ridiculous number, still can't believe the figure we got of 23m+, a shocking amount of those apparently over in China from the article I read too?) + the continuation of the Friend's Pass to share the game + releasing only a week after the only other big 90+ average rated AAA release of the year so far which is on the entire opposite end of the gaming spectrum (Monster Hunter Wilds) + so many other things which seem to be going the game's way. 

From what I've seen going around, it seems by the few ways available to measure besides official figures shared by EA or Hazelight themselves, the game is doing very well. I think it was at something like 200k concurrent players (or something ridiculous like that) on Steam at launch?

I'm really happy that they've seen continued success with two female leads, I think I've seen some disparaging comments out there about the game having two female leads but it doesn't seem to be getting in the way of its success, which is great to see! 

Think I'll need to keep my eye out for a physical copy at some point too, now that you mention it  I played both A Way Out and It Takes Two with my younger brother so hoping we can carve out the time to do the same with Split Fiction at some point! 

Edited 11 hours ago by Julius