First off, I came to this game with an advantage, emotionally speaking. I am the younger of two brothers. My family is not that far removed from the family in the game, Brothers. My dad died when I was 19, far older than the age the younger brother appears to be when his mom dies, but trust me, at any age, a parent dying is never easy.

There are a lot of things about Brothers that have stuck with me in the week or so since I played it. Without any words, the two brothers convey so much about themselves in how they act towards other people. The older brother is always the one to pull out the map and keep the quest moving along, whereas the younger brother just goofs off. The real story in the game, at least to someone in my position, is the maturation of the younger brother. He goes from spitting in wells and being a jerk to townsfolk to having to bury his brother and overcome his greatest fears.

At first the controls in Brothers seem like they're going to be frustrating. Controlling two people with one controller is insane, and that's the beautiful part about it. As you're just running the brothers through a corridor, you can never get them to exactly the same direction at exactly the same pace. As you run along, they weave back and forth, overtaking each other and just overall looking like they're having fun despite their daunting adventure. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sequence where you ride the mountain goats along the pass. These moments, both the times where the big brother is frustrated with the little brother and the times they're just having fun together, felt less like game sequences and more like memories. The game wasn't just telling its story, it was also telling mine.

There are a number of gut-punch emotional moments throughout the game, and those are going to be the ones people will remember and write about. For me though, the game was a constant stream of emotion. The nostalgia for the good times, the embarrassments that have stuck with me. My brother and I have always been fairly close, but I had never really taken the time to step back and look at our relationship the way this game has made me. It stuns me that this game had the power to do that. Anyway, I just wanted to share my (slightly long winded) experience with the game, thanks for reading.

I tried the demo, but couldn't get over the controls, which really were frustrating, and the pacing just seemed overly-slow to me. It was just a demo, so maybe I needed to give it some more time, but I find these days that if a game doesn't grab me in the first ten minutes, I'm out. Which is very unfair, but with three small kids now, I don't have the time to waste waiting to see if something gets good.

Shit, I hadn't thought of it like that. I had created a setup where the older brother (and since I'm left-handed, more used to controlling a character with left stick) would move first and then the little brother would follow. But yeah, many moments of it looking like two people were actually controlling each separately like a co-op game. The goats bit was so much fun.

I think I had a lump in my throat when I had to bury the older brother. It reminded me of that moment in Walking Dead but this was far more emotional and involving. I'd probably have been a bowl of tears if I had an actual bigger brother. No wonder Justin McElroy was so taken aback by the game.

I might have to recommend this to my cousins who are brothers.