We continued our journey in It Takes Two, and the worlds are getting more complicated. For the first time (that I can remember), I actually felt a little nauseous playing a level. The narrative for this game is still lacking, but the puzzles are still interesting, and we had a few laugh-out-loud moments (along with a pretty cringe boss fight).

In this stage, you’re defying the laws of gravity and growing/shrinking in size at a moment’s notice. The mechanics were fun and interesting, but there were times where I got a little lost in the controls (mostly because I lost my spatial awareness). The puzzles are getting a bit more challenging and I found myself watching my co-op partner’s screen more often so I knew when to make changes.

Highlight 1: Cody shrinks and goes into a ball. You must launch him and time the raising/lowering of walls so he doesn’t explode… or just launch him straight into a wall.

One moment that took us the longest to sort out was the launching of characters up onto a platform. This confusion led to us unlocking an achievement and was pretty funny to witness as it unfolded. We thought for sure we had solved the problem, only to find tiny Cody launched into oblivion.

This next video is how you actually solve the puzzle:

This entire space-themed section is a series of puzzles and portals that allow to you ascend to the top. You’re doing all of these puzzles to reach the boss: Moon Baboon. This is Rose’s toy whose only purpose in life is to make sure Rose is happy. He loves her and doesn’t want to see her sad. Since her parents’ divorce makes her sad, he is obviously trying to keep them away from her.

Once you reach the top, you begin an all-out assault on her beloved toy and as if it wasn’t bad enough, the final stage of fighting Moon Baboon is a segment I would’ve opted out of if I could. You’re basically hunting this toy down to murder him when all he wants to do is make their kid happy. Eek. Let’s break that discomfort with another hilarious puzzle fail:

At least Moon Baboon ultimately doesn’t die? And we just promise to make sure Rose plays with him? But, bleh, I did not like how it felt hunting him down.

Once you get through all of this, you find yourself in Rose’s room, but she can’t actually see you. So now, we decide we want to destroy ANOTHER toy she loves to get her attention. This is feeling kind of gross. Anyway, we are off to puzzle our way through her bedroom so that we can find another toy to murder. And, we are making sure to troll each other along the way (and, inadvertently, sometimes ourselves).

Still enjoying the game… still finding a lot of it to be “eesh” story-wise. Onward!

You can find part 1 here: “It Takes Two” and the next chapter, part 3: “It Takes Two Got Real Dark Real Quick”. The finale can be found at “Wrapping Up It Takes Two”.