0:00

Let's get everybody in Chicago.

0:02

This is Kalee here. I

0:04

have just finished split fiction

0:06

and I have to say

0:08

it is the best game

0:10

that I have played in

0:12

years. Let's talk about it.

0:14

What fiction comes to us

0:16

from Hazelite Studios, their fourth game.

0:19

known for their cooperative masterpieces and

0:21

known for matching up really fantastic

0:23

gameplay with narrative bits that really

0:26

comes through and bring together that

0:28

human element that we really love

0:30

to see in split fiction nails

0:33

that in spades with this game.

0:35

It is like I said in

0:37

the intro and I'm not even

0:39

gonna bury the lead. This is

0:42

the best game that I have

0:44

played in years. This game is

0:46

fantastic from top to bottom. It

0:48

is innovative. It is thoughtful and it

0:51

is just one of the coolest experiences

0:53

I've had in a very long time.

0:55

You start the game as these two

0:58

characters who are these young women who

1:00

are looking to get their stories published.

1:02

and they wind up going to this

1:05

conglomerate, this kind of big business that

1:07

is running these experiments where they are

1:09

looking for folks to be able to

1:12

extract story from people who are willing

1:14

to put themselves in this weird and

1:16

funky machine. Some hijinks ensue and they

1:19

wind up being mashed up into this

1:21

one space where both of them are

1:23

now sharing. kind of almost one body

1:25

and one kind of consciousness. It was

1:27

it being something that is not only

1:29

the kind of main driver for the

1:32

gameplay elements, but really does bring together

1:34

an interesting layer of how you mash

1:36

up genre, which are the sci-fi space

1:38

and the fantasy space that they're looking

1:41

to kind of both incorporate. You have

1:43

Zoe who is looking to kind of

1:45

get all of our fantasy stories into

1:47

the world, and you have Mio who

1:50

is way deep into the sci-fi space

1:52

and she's looking to kind of showcase

1:54

some of the stories in that

1:56

world. You wind up having a

1:58

really cool moment. in the beginning

2:00

of the game where you start

2:02

to see the pieces come together.

2:05

You start to see the beginnings

2:07

of what you think of in

2:09

this kind of really, really fun

2:11

co-op experience. You see the split

2:13

screen that they always do. You

2:15

know, you have Mia on one

2:17

side, kind of exploring in spaces.

2:19

of her liking and of her

2:21

imagination, then you have Zoe as

2:23

well, thinking about how she can

2:26

incorporate the fantasy space into the

2:28

worlds that they have found themselves

2:30

in. And they wind up sharing

2:32

space across these two genres of

2:34

games and genres of story. So

2:36

you're bouncing between the sci-fi space

2:38

and the fantasy space. Often you're

2:40

kind of going through these memories

2:42

of each of them and stories

2:44

that they had written while going

2:47

through and kind of playing through

2:49

them in in those kind of

2:51

narrative spaces and it's really fantastically

2:53

done in terms of the ways

2:55

the game manifests and showcases not

2:57

only smart and interesting cooperative gameplay

2:59

that balances platforming and puzzles and

3:01

moments where you have to use

3:03

and kind of understand where your

3:05

partner are in space and navigate

3:08

through these worlds to get to

3:10

either the end of what you

3:12

would think of as a kind

3:14

of narrative plot point. or moving

3:16

into these really cool secondary spaces

3:18

called side stories where you have

3:20

these one-off experiences that balance between

3:22

various games that we've played in

3:24

the past and new experiences that

3:26

you have kind of seen that

3:29

are thought through from the imaginations

3:31

and the memories of these two

3:33

characters. They nail all of those

3:35

pieces so well. I have been

3:37

sitting here thinking about ways to

3:39

talk about this game without showcasing

3:41

and sharing spoilers and the hardest

3:43

part is not showing all the

3:45

goodies that are in this game.

3:47

For far review, you know, I

3:50

got a chance to this game

3:52

with Cam Hawkins, you know, a

3:54

person who you've seen on our

3:56

show numerous times and every time

3:58

that we would go to a

4:00

new level, we would be on

4:02

comms and talking about what's the

4:04

next thing to do and what's

4:06

the next thing to kind of

4:08

see. And every moment that you

4:11

would go from one level to

4:13

the next was something new, was

4:15

something different, was something really smart

4:17

or really fun or a way

4:19

that really challenged you to think

4:21

about how can you get through

4:23

these levels together. in a way

4:25

that never felt super, super difficult,

4:27

but also felt amazingly challenging, but

4:29

also was something in which you

4:32

have to be on columns. Like

4:34

this is a game where you

4:36

cannot play this in a way

4:38

where you're not having constant communication

4:40

about how you're kind of navigating

4:42

through these levels. And that was

4:44

a really fun experience. It was

4:46

a very different one in which,

4:48

you know, I hadn't played a

4:50

way out or it takes two

4:53

or I played a little bit

4:55

of brothers when it first came

4:57

out, but didn't really kind of

4:59

jump into it with both feet.

5:01

And when I saw this at

5:03

the game awards, the first thing

5:05

I thought was that's such a

5:07

really cool idea of how do

5:09

you mash up a sci-fi world

5:11

and a fantasy world. while you're

5:14

playing together and interacting together and

5:16

trying to figure out ways to

5:18

balance out those play styles, but

5:20

every level felt extremely different. Even

5:22

though you were sometimes using similar

5:24

mechanics in the way that you

5:26

were platform or the way that

5:28

you would navigate a puzzle, each

5:30

one of those puzzles felt bespoke.

5:32

They each one of those side

5:35

missions felt integral to the way

5:37

that you thought about playing through

5:39

the rest of this game. It's

5:41

funny, it's smart, it's witty, it

5:43

is, you know, thoughtful in the

5:45

way that it talks about some

5:47

issues that the characters have in

5:49

their kind of real lives in

5:51

outside of those fantasy spaces, outside

5:53

of those kind of metaverse spaces.

5:56

And I have to look directly

5:58

in the camera. talk directly to

6:00

Joseph, the creative director and head

6:02

of Hazelite. This is one of

6:04

the smartest games I've ever played.

6:06

The decisions that were made in

6:08

this game to make not only

6:10

the gameplay feel interesting and new

6:12

and, you know, I've seen stuff

6:14

in this game that I've never

6:16

seen before from a co-op experience

6:18

or from a design perspective. If this

6:20

game doesn't win game of the

6:22

year or is it nominations for

6:24

game of the year, or at

6:26

least, at the very least, the

6:28

best designed game of the year,

6:30

I will riot. It is unreasonable

6:32

for this game to not get

6:34

nods about how smart, how interesting,

6:36

how fun, how it flips ideas

6:38

on its head, how it thinks

6:40

about the way that you interact, not

6:42

only from a gameplay perspective and

6:44

a cooperative perspective, but how you

6:46

bridge and how do you separate

6:48

while also combining gameplay elements to

6:50

make it feel like you're both

6:52

working as a cohesive unit. It

6:54

is so difficult to understand how

6:57

they built this game out, to

6:59

really mash up all of those

7:01

things and make it feel like.

7:03

None of it feels disparate. None of

7:05

it feels like you're reaching for

7:07

something that doesn't make a lot

7:09

of sense and doesn't feel like

7:11

they are taking things and then

7:13

pulling things away. Everything feels additive

7:15

in this game. Every time you

7:17

get to a new break point

7:19

in the story. Each one of

7:21

those things that you wind up

7:23

doing before either are influenced by

7:25

something that happened in those spaces

7:27

or feels like it's building upon something

7:29

that you already kind of did

7:31

in a way that makes you

7:33

feel smart and makes it feel

7:35

like the game is paying attention

7:37

to the fact that you've learned

7:39

something throughout the way that you

7:41

have kind of incorporated those pieces

7:43

of gameplay into the next piece

7:45

of the story. It's like mind-blowingly

7:47

good. Like I don't, there aren't

7:49

enough superlatives to kind of drop on

7:52

this game without glowing over it

7:54

and gushing over it because it

7:56

is really that good. I sat

7:58

up and finished this game and

8:00

I was talking to CAM about

8:02

my experiences with it and felt

8:04

like, oh, this is easily one

8:06

of the best games I've played

8:08

this decade. This is definitely the

8:10

best game I played this year.

8:12

by far. Again, we're only in March,

8:14

but also I've played thousands of

8:16

games. I've reviewed hundreds of games

8:18

over the 11 years of doing

8:20

spawn on me. And it is

8:22

rare where I come from playing

8:24

a game and putting a controller

8:26

down and saying, that was an

8:28

experience that I hope people cherish

8:30

and people really take the time

8:32

to understand how good the design

8:34

is on this game. Joseph said

8:36

on a podcast with Min-Max that you'll

8:39

see something towards the end of

8:41

this game that you've never seen

8:43

before, he absolutely is not lying.

8:45

He's saying that and it is

8:47

something that I came across and

8:49

I was like, I can't believe

8:51

they're doing this. This is ridiculously

8:53

good. And it goes from timing

8:55

puzzles to memes to understanding and

8:57

pulling cultural things from the internet,

8:59

pulling things from internet culture, pulling things

9:01

from video game lore and from

9:03

past games you look at and

9:05

you'll say, oh, I know exactly

9:07

where that came from. Oh, that's

9:09

a memory that I had when

9:11

I played a game like this

9:13

when I was a child. Oh,

9:15

this is a game or an

9:17

IP that really connects to this

9:19

world really well and just makes

9:21

sense. Split fiction is so freaking good.

9:24

I'm begging you to go play

9:26

this game. It is. Not that

9:28

expensive is 50 bucks and if

9:30

you have the game you can

9:32

let somebody else play it locally.

9:34

or online. We played with each

9:36

other, just sending an invite between

9:38

each other. We both had to

9:40

have the game for previews because

9:42

there's a function for friend pass

9:44

that's in the game where one

9:46

person can buy the game and basically

9:48

send an invite to someone else.

9:50

So we were lucky enough to

9:52

get another code from PR to

9:54

be able to play together to

9:56

finish the review. And we'll have

9:58

another discussion about the game specifically

10:00

on an upcoming episode to spawn

10:02

on me. We talked through our

10:04

experiences. is from top to bottom

10:06

extraordinary. This is a fantastic game

10:08

from top to bottom. There's only a

10:10

couple of small drawbacks that I

10:12

would say from this game that

10:14

I would like to point out.

10:16

One is there are some button

10:18

prompts that happened throughout the game.

10:20

Some of them are kind of

10:22

balanced between the differences of holding

10:24

down a button to kind of

10:27

make a meter go up so

10:29

that you can finish in action.

10:31

And some of them are ones where

10:33

you have to mash on it.

10:35

Sometimes in the game, although it

10:37

does have visual prompts for some

10:39

of those things, sometimes it doesn't

10:41

necessarily tell you exactly which version

10:43

of that you should be going

10:45

through. There was one section where

10:47

we thought we were supposed to

10:49

mash our way through it when

10:51

we were basically supposed to be

10:53

hitting the button at the same time,

10:55

but the prompt looked exactly the

10:57

same. That's one issue that I

10:59

found with the game. The other

11:01

issue is that when you do

11:03

die in this game, and again,

11:05

difficulty isn't super difficult, but it

11:07

is stuff where you're having a

11:09

lot of things on the screen

11:11

at the same time trying to

11:13

kill you and do that. And

11:15

sometimes when you wind up dying,

11:17

there's a mechanic where you basically hit

11:20

the button and mash your way

11:22

through an octagon and basically give

11:24

yourself a way to revive. But

11:26

sometimes when you're doing that, you

11:28

get spawned into some of the

11:30

attacks that are happening from the

11:32

enemies or you're getting spawned into

11:34

a part of the map where

11:36

you are in limbo and there's

11:38

nowhere for you to land. And

11:40

sometimes those spawn points are just too

11:42

fast for you to be able

11:44

to react to. So that's one

11:46

thing that. that was a little

11:48

bit of a knock, but overall,

11:50

between the balance of fantastic puzzles,

11:52

really smart cultural tidbits that come

11:54

through that are just like, oh,

11:56

that was really smart and funny

11:58

and interesting, two characters that really

12:00

do come through on screen and

12:02

have really interesting fun stories, and just

12:05

a baseline of polish and excellence

12:07

that goes across this game from

12:09

top to bottom that for the

12:11

12 hours that this game occupies

12:13

in your life. You are never

12:15

looking for something else. You're always

12:17

involved and engaged and paying attention.

12:19

And when it does the kind

12:21

of like moments where it ramps

12:23

it up and then pulls it

12:25

back down so you have those

12:27

moments of brevity, it is just like

12:29

a perfectly paced game. So we're

12:31

gonna end out on that note.

12:33

This game is a five out

12:35

of five for me. This is

12:37

a 10 out of 10 game.

12:39

This is again one of the

12:41

best experiences I've had. playing video

12:43

games in my life of playing

12:45

video games over 30 plus years

12:47

of playing video games. And I

12:49

have to say massive love and massive

12:52

props to Hayes Light. Massive props

12:54

to EA for making this game

12:56

happen. Massive props to Joseph and

12:58

the rest of his team who

13:00

we got a chance to meet

13:02

at the preview event. And we'd

13:04

love to have them on the

13:06

show to talk about the game

13:08

at some point. This is a

13:10

must play, this is a must

13:12

buy, this is the best game I

13:14

played this year and has definitely

13:16

reached my top 10 of all

13:18

games lists forever and ever and

13:20

ever. So thank you so much

13:22

for rocking, thank you so much

13:24

for listening, paying attention to hanging

13:26

out. Hopefully you'll go check out

13:28

more of the streams that we're

13:30

going to do for this game,

13:32

check out more of the show,

13:34

check out podcasting platforms all over

13:36

the world, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Spotify, Spotify,

13:38

all those good places, YouTube as

13:40

well. and we're hoping to grow

13:42

our YouTube channel as well. So

13:44

please, please, please go subscribe on

13:46

all those spaces. And we'll have

13:48

more information and more goodies coming

13:50

to you very, very soon here

13:52

on Spawn on Me and in

13:54

the future. So thanks again to

13:57

everybody. We hope to see you

13:59

soon. Much love. Peace.