There’s not many games nowadays that allow you to play split-screen with a friend on the couch. Couch coop is becoming somewhat of a rarity in recent gaming. The only time you’d sit down with a friend playing video games on the same screen is if you’re playing a fighting game.
A Way Out is one of those rare games where playing with your friend right next to you is not only available but encouraged. There’s a bit of fun to go back to this old school style of gaming where you can just play split-screen with a friend.
So how exactly does playing side-by-side with a friend work for this game? Especially when it’s only on a single screen. One has to wonder how a third person format like A Way Out is in any way comfortable to play split-screen coop.
Well, as you can see Hazelight Studios took great care into making this work. Playing a game like this split-screen with another person regardless of where they are is a pretty cool feature, but also quite risky.
Even with the screen cut in half for both players, there’s still ample room for both to play the game comfortably. Otherwise, there’d have been major complains by now. One of the reasons which, is that it knows just how much room to give the player. For example, one part of the game has one player driving a car while the other hides away in the back. Most of the screen switches over to the player driving and minimizes attention on the person hiding away. With this format, players know which character has the more active role to pay attention to and can easily shift focus. The game’s camera knows how to work with players and that makes A Way Out comfortably better.
At times, the game’s screen even merges into one, provided both players are in the same area. It even shifts from splitting left and right to up and down. And this works really well. It doesn’t do anything to bother the players from cooperating in a fun way.
A Way Out works rather spectacularly when you’re playing it out with a friend nearby right next to you. Both of you can instantly cooperate and comment on what’s going on in the game. It makes it more fun to go through a game with someone right beside you playing it with you the whole way. Not to say that playing it with someone else from afar can be a bad thing, but it does have its perks. Plus, the bonding experience doesn’t hurt anyone.
So if you’re still thinking about buying this to play with a friend, hopefully this article managed to convince you that it’s a good game to play with a friend. Heck, with the friend pass you can invite someone to play the game with you even if they don’t own a copy. A Way Out is designed in a way that each level offers a different experience for you. It’s certainly not one to be missed out on.
