The evaluation of ＂Two in a Row＂ scored 9.5 points, holding hands and crossing the difficulties together.

Josef Fares is definitely a wonderful flower in the game producers’ circle. This guy can not only make a tearful and warm work like Brothers: The Legend of Gemini, but also extend the most cordial greetings to Oscar in beautiful language at the TGA award ceremony. A film director who turned to play games seems to have an unusual obsession with two-person cooperative games. From the aforementioned Brothers: The Legend of Gemini to the critically acclaimed escape game, and today’s Double Walk, Josef Fares can always pull out many novel things from these ruined themes, whether it is family, friendship or love, so that those paired players can feel it in their carefully arranged playground.

Everything will not be as good as it is. Josef Fares, who has been deeply involved in the soil of two-person cooperation, has made rapid progress in recent years. The promise of "1000 dollars for not fun" before its release has made me have great expectations for the quality of the finished product of "Two-person Travel". After the actual experience, it is no exaggeration to say that "Two in a Row" is the best work of its kind so far, both in gameplay and in the design of "two in cooperation".

The story of "Two in a Row" revolves around a couple who are deeply involved in a marriage crisis. After their relationship broke down, the disappointed daughter turned into a humanoid doll created by her with the help of a mysterious magic book. In the game, two players need to control the husband and wife separately, and embark on a fantastic journey to lift the curse and restore the body, and at the same time, under the guidance of the magic book, repair the already fragmented feelings between the two.

Since it is "Two-in-a-Row", Qi Xin’s cooperation of two people is indispensable on the way of "Walking", and the concept of two-in-one cooperation has almost penetrated into every link of the game. At the beginning of each level, players will get a key prop closely related to the theme of the map because of the different roles they choose. For example, in a level with the tree heart as the background, players who play the leading role will get a special tool that can spray tree sap and attach it to wooden materials, and a weapon that can fire matches and detonate tree sap, and almost all the fighting and decryption games in this level are carried out around one side spraying tree sap and the other side detonating. In addition, various interactive items scattered on the map also complement the props in the hands of players, which together play an important role in connecting story lines and enriching gameplay, making the game based on platform jumping as the main gameplay, resulting in a variety of unexpected gameplay such as action shooting and even air and sea battles, providing more surprises for players.

Most games with special props as the dominant position have a common feature, that is, the difficulty of the game is directly proportional to the player’s proficiency in props. However, "Two in a Row" obviously wants you to experience the whimsy of the creator, rather than honing your skills in constant failure. Except for the almost zero death penalty, all the props in the game have very easy-to-understand functions, and will not accompany the players for too long. Maybe you are still holding a sap sprayer at the last level and performing a Hollywood-style explosion with your friends. At the next level, you put on gravity shoes and become a space dancer, roaming around the stars. More importantly, the props in "A Journey for Two" are not a cursory taste, but accurately find the opportunity of each item’s appearance, and balance its proportion in the whole game, so that all the props in the game can make the best use of it and leave a very deep impression on people.

In addition to props, the design of linear checkpoints with box-style maps is also a highlight of this work. In each large-scale plot level, "Walking for Two" sets up a "theme park" close to the story scene for players-a medieval castle built by Lego toys, a snowman town in a glass ball, and a toy city with a board game style. Every detail in these scenes with great visual impact has traces of the creator’s painstaking efforts. Although "A Journey for Two" doesn’t fill every theme park with a huge amount of playable content like "Super Mario: Odyssey", it also relieves the players’ desire to explore under the long-term linear process to some extent.

In the same vein as Escape from Life, apart from the main line checkpoints and hidden elements placed on the map that need to be explored by players, Two-in-a-Row also provides players with a large number of two-person confrontation games, which cover more than a dozen types, such as voice swimming, shooting, whack-a-mole, tug-of-war, etc., and often appear on your way to the next place, which together with the main gameplay of the whole game constitutes a perfect two-person game.

Back to the plot level, thanks to the excellent role-building and Josef Fares’ excellent skills as a film director, the plot of "A Journey for Two" is definitely a good story, although it is not complicated and does not have much significance to explore in depth. In the process of manipulating the couple to cross one difficulty after another, while enjoying the joy brought by the game, the players are slowly learning and understanding the difficulties of the two as husband and wife, father and mother in life, reviewing all kinds of past, accepting each other again and repairing the broken emotional fragments as before.

Just like the players who go hand in hand in the game, the delicate family warmth and the comedy bridge that laughs and scolds complement each other, and the two emotions together form a perfect closed loop of the whole story of "Two People in a Row".

In addition, the cartoon style also makes this work make great progress compared with the realistic "Escape from Birth" in the performance of characters and the fluency of movements. In terms of hard power, with the blessing of Unreal 4 engine, whether it is environmental modeling or light and shadow special effects, the fantasy world shown in "Two in a Row" can be described as "beautiful". The use of film shooting techniques such as long shots and slow shots also makes the performance of this play quite film-like, which is worthy of players’ repeated aftertaste and feelings contained in each shot.

There is no doubt that "Two in a Row" is definitely one of the best two-person cooperative games in recent years. From the moment I plunged into this wonderful world, I was bombarded by senses from all sides all the time and enjoyed this delicious dish carefully cooked by creativity and imagination. The only doubt is, for Josef Fares and Hazelight, is "Walking for Two" the pinnacle or just the beginning?

For more information, please pay attention to: