Concept: Destroy up Fiction Has One Of The Finest Final Ranges Of Any Sport

Without revealing too much detail, the opening moments of the level showcase two distinct worlds on either side of the screen, and you can freely cross the barrier and enter each of them with minimal or no loading times at all. Indeed, it splits into two games in one, but every action you take applies to both worlds simultaneously.

For example, you might need to ride hoverboards on the left to escape a fire-breathing dragon on the right. Or, it could be necessary to swim underwater on the right and then perform a quick leap to a spaceship on the left to avoid being eaten by a shark. There’s even a moment when that spaceship transforms into a dragon as it carries you from the left to the right side of the screen. It’s absurd.

Then, things start to get truly wild – the massive vertical line that has split the screen for the last 15 hours begins to move around, cutting it into diagonals and rectangles and even dividing itself into multiple screens and smaller displays. There’s a point where it splits into four continuously moving screens with four different worlds being rendered simultaneously!

You know when Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart was marketed as a next-gen marvel because of its ability to “jump between action-packed worlds” seamlessly without loading screens? That’s what segments like these remind me of. I simply can’t comprehend how they’re pulling it off – the frame rate remains incredibly smooth on the Xbox Series X during this sequence as well.

And that’s not the end of the insanity either. There’s a moment when one of the players falls straight into a phone, and the other has to tilt the phone to assist with the platforming and help them escape. There’s another part where the gigantic boss tries to destroy the split-screen by pushing it away from the center, and it’s your job to prevent him from doing so.

I know I’m not explaining all of this perfectly, but I don’t want you to know everything. If you’re genuinely eager to see it all, I’ll link the video below, but I highly encourage you to experience it for yourself. It’s filled with so many spectacular moments – remarkably bold gameplay ideas that I’ve never seen attempted in a video game before.

If you play games as much as we all do, it is quite rare for a level or story moment to leave such an impression that you realize you’ll cherish it forever, but Split Fiction’s final level is undoubtedly one of those for me. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that left me so stunned for as long as Split Fiction’s final level did – we’re talking about half an hour of continuous “wow” moments that both of us enjoyed immensely.

If you are still reading this and itching to play Split Fiction right now (you ignored my warning at the end!), I hope you enjoy the game and its final level as much as I did. This is the finest co-op adventure from Hazelight Studios yet, and that’s saying a lot considering A Way Out and It Takes Two are both remarkable games as well.