Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons is the newest title from Starbreeze Studios who are coming off of a pretty good month in the form of the relatively well received Payday 2. Brothers is a much more laid back title, there’s no bank robbing going on here, just a good old fashioned fantasy quest. The twist? It’s a co-operative game, with room for only one player.
As the game opens you’re introduced to your two titular brothers and their father who has fallen gravely ill. You’ll load dear old dad up onto a cart and wheel him over to the doctor who doesn’t have a lot of good news. The game doesn’t have any English dialogue, everything is told through gibberish similar to games like The Sims or Banjo-Kazooie. Nevertheless, the doctor tells you that there is a cure for your father’s ailment but it’s on the other side of a pretty lengthy and treacherous journey. This doesn’t faze the brothers and just like that you’re off on your quest. As you travel the brothers will encounter numerous environment based puzzles as well as a few enemies to contend with.
The game’s most unique aspect is its control scheme. You’ll use analog sticks to move the brothers around and the triggers to get them to interact with objects. The older brother is manipulated entirely with the left side of the controller while the right side belongs to your younger sibling. Despite essentially only having two buttons to worry about, the setup does have a bit of a learning curve.
Unfortunately for a game whose mechanics are so tightly bound to controls Brothers suffers from a number of control issues. Interacting with objects requires a sometimes unforgiving amount of precision. There were a lot of moments where I assumed I was close enough to an item or person to interact with it only to find that I needed to take a few steps closer or rotate my character just a few degrees to make it stick.
Pathing is dodgy as well. Several times I would get too close to a ledge or head in the wrong direction and wind up getting stuck on an invisible wall when I went to turn around. This issue is compounded by the fact that controlling the brothers has a learning curve in and of itself. At first I thought I was just getting stuck because I was doing something wrong with the controller but eventually I found that it was just the game world’s rough edges I was getting caught on.
The game is great at introducing and removing mechanics on the fly. In one level you’ll use the older brother’s torch to shoo away wolves all while you keep the younger brother close so that he doesn’t become wolf dinner. In another part you’ll have to contend with an angry troll. You’ll use one brother to bait him into a cage and the other to lock the door on him. These concepts are introduced in a fast, easy to understand way, and then they generally don’t re-appear for the rest of the game. It’s refreshing to play a game where your actual gameplay changes with every new level that you reach.
The trade off with your gameplay constantly mutating is that it can only keep it up so long. Some would see a three hour run time as a detriment, and considering the game is fifteen dollars you can definitely make a compelling argument that its length does not work in its favor. But the short run time prevents repetition, the game unloads every trick it has in its bag and rarely makes you repeat the same thing twice.
The world itself is fresh to match the gameplay. Different chapters all have their own themes, from a bustling mine full of trolls to a frozen city, there are some dazzling visuals to behold and you would most likely never mistake one for another.
The controls were not my only frustration. At one point I found that an item I was supposed to interact with was unresponsive when I went to use it. At first I assumed it was just some kind of puzzle I had to solve or maybe I had to manipulate the controls in a funky way. Unfortunately no amount of analog stick twirling could solve the problem and there weren’t any other interactions to be had. Because the game has puzzle elements I assumed I’d done something wrong a good twenty minutes trying to figure out what to do before I went online and looked up a walkthrough. It turned out the game had glitched out. Unable to backtrack, I was forced to restart the chapter, and although it was not a long chapter the whole debacle probably sucked away a good half hour that would have been better spent playing the game.
Small issues aside, the game’s plot is almost certainly a high point. Even here, the unique controls find a way to augment things. As you go through the game you’ll get the hang of its learning curve and slowly the brothers will begin to work better with one another. I’m not sure that the game shows their relationship growing much beyond the occasional hug, but your mastery over the controls will slowly make you feel a bond between them that’s never shown in any cutscene. The game closes out particularly strongly, with an epilogue that I won’t even touch for fear of spoilers. At best I can say, it’s powerful stuff.
Although I would heartily recommend the game’s emotional and satisfying story, it might not hurt to wait for a patch or two and a switch to a platform with a less ridiculous monetary system. The game is also available on Steam and will be coming to PSN next month. Either way, you’re going to see this title on a lot of “best of” lists at the end of this year.
