Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

With a moving story and exceptional presentation, Brothers is a fine addition to the recently expanding list of short, simplistic indie games with a focus on narrative and tone. While maybe not quite as brilliant and Journey or Gone Home, Brothers is still an incredible game that is absolutely worth playing. At its core, Brothers is a puzzle game, although the puzzles are not the focus of the experience. Instead, Brothers doubles down on its unique control mechanics which mirror the themes of the story. Players control both brothers in Brothers at the same time, one with each analogue stick. It's difficult to get a hang of this, but Brothers smartly doesn't require a great deal of quick platforming. The puzzles focus on utilizing the strengths of each brother to overcome their respective weaknesses. The younger brother, for example, is too short to jump to high ledges, while the older brother is too large to fit through narrow bars. By combining their abilities, though, players will be able to get both Brothers through the gorgeous and treacherous landscapes they must traverse on their journey to find a cure for their father's illness.

And what landscapes they are! Brothers at times feels ripped from the frames of a John Bluth film. Like the animation master, Journey's landscapes are both stunning to behold and filled with danger. The game masterfully flits between diverse locations, from the sun dripped meadows of the opening, to the deadly forest featured mid-game, to several awe inspiring areas that bring the journey to its conclusion. Brothers achieves the difficult task of making each of its chapters more impressive than the last, both visually and with increasingly creative uses of its unique single-player co-op gameplay. To give anymore detail would ruin the joy of experiencing many of these elements for yourself, but suffice to say that Brothers gets better as it goes and by the time it is over you'll have played through some wildly creative puzzles, and traveled through some absolutely mesmerizing landscapes.

There are few problems, all of them minor. Of course there is something of a learning curve when it comes to the controls, and as brilliant as the merger of story and gameplay are, these controls make the act of actually moving through the game not exceptionally fun. It is never broken, or even especially frustrating, but if you come into a game expecting to master the controls immediately you'll likely have a rude awakening with Brothers. Otherwise my only concern would be certain technical aspects that get in the way of the brilliant art direction. Shadows are pixelated messes, while textures can appear muddy. Sub-pixel aliasing can bring a distracting shimmer to detailed objects. All of these issues can be brute forced through on the PC where the use of Unreal Engine 3 lets players easily head into the config files and up the texture and shadow resolution manually. And players can also enable any number of aliasing options through their graphics card's control panel. But console players are stuck losing some of the beauty of these environments, which is a shame.

These problems do little to detract from the overall experience, though. While PC players willing to do some tinkering will get the best experience, Brothers is a superb game regardless, with a moving story, absolutely jaw dropping art direction, and a clever gameplay conceit that manages to merge gameplay and narrative in a way that hasn't been seen since Braid was released half a decade ago. Absolutely recommended.