Month: March 2021

The team at Swedish game studio Hazelight has spent nearly a decade making cooperative adventure games—and doubling down on the "co-op" tag by requiring two players for their games to work. But where 2013's Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons offered a refreshing morsel of co-op adventuring, 2018's A Way Out buried its most clever moments in an overwrought story and slow mechanics.

Trailers for the company's next game, March 26's It Takes Two (published by EA), got my hopes up in both of those critical categories. The footage seemed to turn a new Hazelight storytelling page in terms of a "rom-com" plot, while its always-cooperative gameplay looked bouncier and more action-packed. I optimistically attended an online preview event last week to see what the fuss might be about, which allowed me to install and test the game's first two hours on my PC (and link up with Ars Technica's Kyle Orland as an online co-op partner).

In the game's first two hours, we discovered a real surprise: EA's best-controlling 3D platformer since 2007's The Simpsons, and a remarkably fun co-op spin on the genre in terms of solving puzzles and battling enemies with asymmetrical, often-changing abilities. What wasn't surprising, sadly, is Hazelight's persisting shoddiness at telling a story worth investing in.

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  This is Volvo's next battery EV. It's called the C40 Recharge, and it's a fastback version of the XC40 Recharge crossover. [credit: Volvo ]

Calling climate change "the greatest safety test" it needs to pass, Volvo is vowing that half the cars it sells in 2025 will be battery electric vehicles, with a model range that's only BEVs by 2030. And by 2040, the company plans to be entirely carbon neutral, working with its partners to reduce emissions across the entire supply chain. (For a little more explanation, we talked to Volvo about sustainability and battery supply chains last year.) The statements were made at an online event on Tuesday morning to launch the company's latest BEV, the C40 Recharge.

Previously, Volvo mostly used the C-prefix for compact hatchbacks. Now, the prefix denotes a fastback version of the XC40 Recharge crossover, probably because everyone wants crossovers and no one wants hatchbacks anymore. The family resemblance is immediately obvious, but Volvo says that everything from the A pillar backward is new. This becomes evident when you look at it in profile—there's a more steeply canted windshield at the front, and at the rear a spoiler integrated into the roof helps maintain rear headroom.

The fastback crossover might be even more distinctive once the sun goes down. New "Thor's Hammer" headlights have pixel technology for the first time and also have elements that move with the steering to better illuminate the road. And at the rear, there is a new twilight signature that looks particularly cool in the dark (and which was influenced by childhood memories of Battlestar Galactica, according to one of Volvo's designers.