After hunting down Moon Baboon, the Cody and May duo alluded to the fact that they would be murdering another beloved toy, but I was not prepared for how it would play out. Jumping back in, navigating the castle is a fun experience. We are introduced to the new zone with a slew of fart jokes before diving into what felt like a tribute to old school Diablo games.

The powers are fun to play with as you crush enemy toys and dodge traps. You eventually lose the powers, as is the case with every zone you visit, but this was one of the more memorable sections for me. I’m sharing a little snippet of how these powers feel below:

Moving along, you find yourself in the castle grounds. There’s a train circling the perimeter, balloons to pop, cannons to launch yourself out of, and toys running around. It’s an overall festive, fun environment that temporarily obscures the darkness around the corner.

Now, hunting down Moon Baboon felt pretty bad, but nothing prepared me for the heaviness of slowly torturing and eventually killing Cutie the elephant. Unlike Moon Baboon, she doesn’t meet you with any hostility. She’s sweet, inviting, and loving, making you feel even worse than you might’ve felt already. Once she finds out your purpose, she takes off running.

Catching Cutie and murdering her plays out slowly and even though we know she is a toy, the torture May and Cody put her through for (surprise!) no reason is hard to play through. I’ll spare you the clips I took of it, but Cutie fights for her life as Cody and May tear her to pieces for an ultimately fruitless execution.

We turned the game off after that. I needed a palette cleanse playing games where I expect the death and destruction I deal out.

The game then tries to brush all of this trauma under the rug with a beautiful clock world. They introduce some of the most intricate-looking levels complete with mechanical animals, time manipulation, and slow-motion explosions. This may be my favorite zone visually.

The world is rich with color and life. I guess the game thought by introducing some emotionless, murder-hungry animals, we might forget about the savage slaying of Cutie… but we haven’t forgotten. These backdrops did temporarily distract me though.

After finishing this zone, we still have at least 3 more to explore. I thought we were getting close to the end, but we’ve still got a lot of puzzles to work through. Our human forms are still zombified and our daughter is still creeping around with her empty eyes.

Interested to see how we got here? You can find part 1: “It Takes Two” and part 2: “Continuing It Takes Two” here. The finale can be found at “Wrapping Up It Takes Two”.