If you're a gamer of a certain age (cough, in your 30s), you long for the days of sitting on a basement couch playing split-screen games with your buddies. Mario Party and Halo were splitting 32-inch TVs into four squares! Nowadays you don't see much of that. Modern graphics and consoles have done away with couch co-op. The last Halo title didn't even have local split screen for two players. Coincidentally, the year Halo Infinite debuted was when the co-op revival truly began.
In 2021, It Takes Two—a co-op adventure that I can only describe as Toy Story for the newly divorced—won Game of the Year and put Hazelight Studios on the map. For die-hard gamers, creative director Josef Fares was already a household name after his infamous "fuck the Oscars" speech at the 2017 Game Awards, which would, in four years, honour him for making the best game of 2021.
Well, what did Fares pull off after another four years? Split Fiction. It's a send-up of classic sci-fi and fantasy storytelling that expands upon the innovative cooperative gameplay of It Takes Two and adds plenty of invigorating twists of its own. You and a friend will speed through cyberspace, ride dragons, and work together to stop a scheming CEO from stealing your ideas. The new title, out today, follows up its acclaimed predecessor with another exhilarating two-player adventure full of genre-hopping gameplay.
Now, Split Fiction is not without its share of flaws, but none of its co-op peers are really even trying to operate on its level. Hazelight is once again setting the standard for co-op gaming—and by the end of its 15-hour run, Split Fiction raises the bar entirely.
You can play Split Fiction online or locally, but no matter what, you have to play the game with someone else. That's the pitch. Because this is nonnegotiable, every copy of the game comes with a Friend's Pass. Meaning: You don't need to convince your high school buddy in Maine to shell out 50 bucks so you can play together. Since you paid Split Fiction's SGD69 price tag, you just have to convince them to take some time out of their day. It's an easier ask. For me, it was my girlfriend—a steady Marvel Snap player who is a fairly causal gamer otherwise. We sat on the couch and played the whole thing in split screen on my PS5 Pro, from start to finish.
It was always easy for both of us to figure out where to go, what to do, and how to engage with whatever new gimmick Split Fiction threw our way. If I had to levy a critique against it, I'd nitpick and say every level ends about 15 to 30 minutes after we tired of the shtick. Aside from that, well, the fact that my partner and I made the time in a busy TV season when Severance, Paradise, and Yellowjackets are dominating our weeknights speaks to how much fun we had.
Split Fiction is relentless in introducing fresh ideas and tossing out the old. Every level is a new playground. At its core, Split Fiction is a 3D action platformer in the vein of Ratchet & Clank. You have a double-jump move and a grappling hook. The addition of another player gives nearly every stage a puzzle element—and you will either work separately or in tandem to solve them.
But on top of this, Split Fiction pulls from the best parts of different genres for each level, not just in how it decorates the sci-fi and fantasy worlds you're exploring (conjured directly from the imagination of the characters you are playing, which I'll explain later) but in what you're doing from moment to moment. Split Fiction gleefully borrows from Diablo, Tron, and plenty of other games and movies I won't spoil. Just know that it's a visual feast and a blast all the way to the end.
The apex of Split Fiction's creativity (until its bonkers finale, at least) comes in the form of Side Stories that break up the coherent level you're exploring with some truly random shit. An early favourite had me controlling a pig that farts rainbows. Another was a radical tribute to one of my favourite retired EA franchises. Side Stories aren't just fun diversions; they often reveal something about the psyche and past traumas of one of the two main characters. Which means that it's about time I fully talk about the plot of Split Fiction. I've been dreading this part.
Here's the gist: Mio is a young, unpublished writer. She is brunette and she loves science fiction. Zoe is a young, unpublished writer. She is blonde and she loves fantasy. The two meet for the first time at the offices of Rader, a megacorp that has promised to publish their work. It turns out that Rader (an Elon Musk–type CEO) is tricking them all, but they only figure this out once they are strapped into a literal machine built to steal their ideas and put them into Rader's... well, whatever Rader makes. That isn't entirely clear.
What's crystal clear is that Split Fiction is a story about AI, large language models, and digital plagiarism in art. The machine creates simulations from Zoe's and Mio's story ideas as they chase an errant glitch that they immediately decide is the MacGuffin that will get them out of here. This plot is a mere excuse to get to Split Fiction's main gimmick, as you travel fantasy and sci-fi worlds that were built to allow the game's designers to flex their creative muscles. And flex they do. The writers? Not so much.
After spending over a dozen hours with Zoe and Mio, I understood their paper-thin traumas and still didn't care. Rader is never convincing as a villain, and as a result the AI metaphor doesn't stick the landing.
As a big SSF nerd, I found Split Fiction's sci-fi elements more lacking than its foray into the fantasy genre. It's pretty easy to feel Harry Potter and Game of Thrones within the fantasy bits; while those aren't my favourite influences, it's at least drawing on something specific. More often than not, the futuristic neons and robotic perils of Mio's mind wind up as a sterile, generic amalgamation devoid of what makes the genre interesting.
If you stick with it until the end, Split Fiction rewards you with one of the most jaw-dropping hours of a video game I've ever played. It's an incredible climax that innovates in the medium and sets the stage for what might be next for this team.
The best part of Split Fiction is that it's gorgeous and easy for all skill levels to learn, and it offers both players entertaining, varied activities the entire way through. If you're looking for the next game to play with your spouse, sibling, or child, this is the one for you.
Originally published on Esquire US
Video games and luxury watches are not necessarily two categories you’d put together. But the two have teamed up more often than you might think.
Tag Heuer has produced two limited edition watches with Super Mario Bros. Panerai has partnered with Razer, the hardware company known for its PCs and peripherals. And Hamilton worked with the developers of Far Cry 6, the first-person shooter game, to create a commemorative field watch, the likeness of which your character could also wear in the game, a model ‘ready for virtual and real-world adventures’.
Now Bulgari, the luxury watchmaker known for its complex movements and ultra-thin engineering, has announced a watch in partnership with the enduring racing simulation franchise Gran Turismo—and designed a concept car to drive in the game, too.
While many of the world’s greatest car brands have developed virtual ‘Vision GT’ custom cars to drive in Gran Turismo—the Jaguar Vision Gran Turismo Coupé; the McLaren Ultimate Vision Gran Turismo; the Ferrari Vision Gran Turismo, and so on—Bulgari is the first non-automotive brand to do so. (Nike did produce an electric ‘sci-fi buggy’, the Nike One 2022, that could be powered by a human body via a ‘spark suit’ that converted body movements into electricity, for 2024’s Gran Turismo 4, but it was not available for purchase in the game and could only be used in practise mode.)
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the game’s Vision GT programme.
Bulgari’s Italian-born design boss—or product creation executive director—Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, went straight from design school to work for Fiat and Alpha Romeo before joining the watch brand in 2001, and cars remain a passion.
The company’s Bulgari Aluminium watch, first released in the late 1990s, was both a product of its times and something of a pioneer in sports watches, the first luxury wristwatch of its kind built using an aluminium case and a rubber strap and bezel—an unusual choice of materials said to be directly inspired by car design.
Relaunched in 2020, by the admission of the brand’s own CEO in order to target millennials, it won a Red Dot Design Award earlier this year, the jury praising its ‘perfect proportions and premium-quality materials’, a miniature ‘synthesis of the arts’. It is this model that’s provided the springboard for the new watch.
The chronograph comes in two versions, one with a yellow dial and black counters, produced in a limited edition of 500, and one with an anthracite dial with yellow indices, produced in a run of 1,200.
Both are sized at 41mm and come in an aluminium case with a titanium caseback with a DLC coating and a rubber bezel and strap. The watches are engraved with a ‘10th Anniversary Vision’ GT’ logo.
“It was inspired by the dashboard of one of the most important cars in rally history, a legendary Italian gran turismo car from the 1990s,” Stigliani tells Esquire, ahead of the project’s reveal at the Grand Turismo World Series Finals, the climax of the professional esports tournament, in Barcelona this afternoon.
The project began after Stigliani reached out to Fabio Filippini, the noted Italian car designer, former design director at the coachbuilder Pininfarina and executive director of the automotive design agency Acceaffe, having discovered his retrospective book Curve and contacted him on Instagram.
Filippini, in turn, knew of Stigliani and his automotive background—and also knew the people at PlayStation.
“I said ‘Fabio! You know I am a great fan of Gran Turismo?’’ Stigliani says. “I played for decades, when I was young—during the night!’
“It was just Gran Turismo on my PlayStation, no other games. But now I have kids, they start to play FIFA, other games… But Gran Turismo for me, is a legend.”
The pair hatched a plan to design a Vision car, the Bulgari Aluminium Vision GT. It was to take its design cues from the industrial aesthetics of the Bulgari Aluminium watch—“Big wheel arch, big screw that reminds you immediately of the screw on the side of the watch,” according to Stigliani. “Geometry of the windshield and the lower part of the body of the car that is totally black.”
PlayStation’s Gran Turismo team then designed the project in-house—the first time they’d done this.
“We said immediately, ‘We don’t have the skills, we don’t have the software to make this kind of thing’,” Stigliani says. “‘So please, you can make the 3D for us?’ And Kazunori Yamuachi, one of the masters of Gran Turismo 3D [department] became the link between Bulgari and Gran Turismo.”
(At this point Stigliani shows Esquire a folder of work-in-progress sketches for the project. It is enormous. “This is a selection!”)
While a brief to design your own virtual race car for PlayStation might conjure up ideas of letting your imagination run at record-breaking lap speeds, Stigliani points out that there are rules. Fairly strict ones.
“This car [should be able to] be built and driven [in the real world],” he says. “Gran Turismo say from the very beginning ‘We do not want to have a ‘watch with a wheel’. We want to have a real car!’ You have to imagine that Gran Turismo, it is so precise for the simulation, that you have some very important [car brands] in the automotive industry that ask Gran Turismo to make a simulation. ‘I have this car, with this [build], with this kind of engine, with this kind of suspension, and I want to [test it out with a view to] participate in 24 hours of Le Mans. Tell me the performance of the car.'”
In other words, car companies use the Gran Turismo Vision GT programme as a proof of concept.
“It is super, super precise,” says Stigliani.
Still, designing such a project was, he says, something of a boy’s dream come true.
“The idea was to make a very cool, Italian-style car, inspired by the [models produced at] the end of the 1960s, inspired by the lightweight Alpha Romeos, with the very pure shape. The amazing exotic cars of the Porsche builder, or Pininfarina. Or other cars from [designer Flaminio] Bertoni, [Marcello] Gandini, [Gruppo] Bertone, the Lancia Stratos, all these kind of cars. Very lightweight. Like the Lotus, the Maserati… This was the idea. Because the Aluminium is a lightweight watch… it’s an amazing design in terms of shape, in terms of high-tech design.”
To get the drive the car in Gran Turismo, you need to first buy the watch—which comes with a QR code.
It is also possible to purchase it in-game, but for that you need one million credits. (Since your correspondent has never played Gran Turismo, Stigliani assures me this is a lot. “And when you achieve this kind of result, you don’t want to spend one million credits on just one car, because you can buy a lot of different cars. And you can make a lot of fine-tuning [to your existing cars].”)
As for how the car handles in the game, Stigliani had some ideas for that, too. “The idea for this car was pushed a lot by me, because I would love to drive a very easy and fun car. Lightweight without a huge engine without thousands of horsepower, because for me that doesn’t make sense. I just [wanted] to enjoy the pleasure of driving the car. In a very pure way. So it’s a bit like a go-kart. With a certain finish.”
As for Stigliani’s own Gran Turismo performance—he admits he’s not quite the demon he once was. “You need a lot of training,” he sighs. “Because, you know, the cars are super-reactive. And the tracks are very precise. When you get older your reaction is less quick.”
“My son Julio started playing Gran Turismo when he was eight, and he’s still playing now he’s 10. When you get older your reactions are less quick.
“At that point, for kids, it’s easier.”
