Review: Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons

So I guess one advantage to being back in the stage of "trying to get as many job interviews lined up as I can" is that it gives me some down time between emails and calls to catch up on a few things that were always on my "to do" list.

For instance, I kept meaning to play a game from Xbox Live Arcade (though it's also available on PSN and Steam) called Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, but just never found the time.

Well, that's one thing off the list.

Now, let's talk about an early contender for my top eleven of 2014 and the first week isn't even over yet.

Brothers (for short) is a conundrum.  People who know me know that I love a great story.  I prefer intelligent dialogue to simple shouting that happens in most games these days, I love an intricately woven storyline that builds off of its own mythology, and I enjoy a game that builds off of what it introduced, requiring you to use the skills you've picked up along the way to accomplish a final goal.

This game has none of that.  And yet, I love it so much.

It's a co-op game designed for one person, if that makes any sense.  Instead of giving you a character who tags along and does actions on their own (or screws things up on their own), the game gives you control of both brothers by essentially splitting the controller in half.  You use the left directional stick to control the older of two brothers and the left trigger as an "action" button for him.  You use the right stick to control the younger brother and use the right trigger to act as his "action" button.  You control both brothers at the same time, and while there are moments of confusion where your thumbs don't seem to understand that the left stick might be controlling the guy on the right side of the screen, you quickly pick up the hang of it and you're soon guiding both brothers through their adventure with ease.

The storyline is simple enough:  the boys have a sick father, and having already lost one parent (the younger brother was present on a boat when their mother drowned, no, I'm not spoiling anything, it's in the opening CG scene), they go on a quest to get the medicine needed to heal their father.  That's as much of the plot you're going to get, not just from me, but from the game itself, because while there is dialogue between characters, it's all in a made-up language, so even when the brothers are talking to each other, you have no idea what they're saying.

Here's the strange thing, though.  You don't need to know what they're saying.  Many important things to use in the game are gestured to by characters pointing, and the scenes are presented in such a way with facial expressions and environments that they could be dubbed over with lines from Jackass and you'd still know what the characters mean.

The game also does nothing to explain the world these two live in, they simply let you experience it the same way your characters are, by wandering through and trying to figure out how to get to the next area.  Environments you wind up exploring are a cave system where you see trolls mining for...something, a tower on a mountain top only accessible by hang gliding, a village in the mountains under assault by a terrible monster, and even a battlefield littered with the bodies of actual giants, and apparently the fighting was recent enough that there's still blood coming from the wounds of the dead.

The game doesn't give any story to explain any of this, and why should it?  It builds the idea that the world these two boys live in is so much greater than the small village they come from, since most stories about young men on a quest are also allegories for growing up, it does well providing the feeling that their innocence is slowly being peeled away and they're becoming much more aware than they originally were.

Combat is very limited in the game, if a creature or monster gets close enough to either boy, that's pretty much the end and you automatically load your last checkpoint.  "Boss" scenes tend to involve using the environment, using one brother as bait and keeping the other near a lever, switch, or other device.  There are a few limited combat moments, but figuring out your way through them is easy enough and still just involve the use of the "action" button at the right moment.

The funny thing about the game is that you're aware you're controlling two brothers, but until you play for a while you don't really appreciate that bond.  One brother is reliant upon the other to cross streams since he can't swim, for example.  If you let the brothers get too far apart, they'll stop, turn to their sibling, and call out to them to hurry up.  I found myself having the older brother go first in certain areas that seemed dangerous, while the younger brother might rush ahead in others that seemed safe so he could explore.  The boys have to work together in certain areas, whether to reach a high ledge, push a large object, or use a large device, and using both hands in sync becomes second nature during these moments.    You experience a connection to the characters because your own hands keep them together.

Graphically, the game is brilliant.  It encourages you often to take advantage of conveniently placed benches to rest for a minute and simply soak in the detail invested in such a huge world.  Caverns, ice floes, and mountain peaks all have so much attention paid to them that you silently hope that there will be more games set in the world so you can see what's over that next horizon.

I won't spoil anything from the ending except to say that there's an exceptionally poignant moment that occurs that really connects with the player (at least, it did with me).  However, after that scene there's another one that occurs that completely plays off of how used to the controls you are and starts to subvert its own rules, and I mean that in a good way.  You start to realize that the actions that would be taken by the button at the start of the game are no longer appropriate for this point in the story, and the impact of what's happening starts to sink in.

A brilliantly creative game, I advise everyone who likes video games to play it, even those who find many modern games too "complex" or "difficult."  I was able to breeze through the game in an afternoon, and with only two buttons (okay, four if you count the buttons to rotate the camera) and two directional sticks, if might feel awkward at first, but you'll appreciate not having to deal with buttons that don't really have any purpose.

Oh, and one other thing I found to be great were the achievements.  The game will hint at what needs to be done in order to unlock them, but no single achievement is earned by simply completing a level.  You have to do certain things in certain locations to activate them, and it's easy to move past if you aren't willing to soak in everything the game wants you to experience.  One is achieved by having a character look at something long enough for a background occurrence to happen.  Another involves sitting in just the right bench at the right place.  One involves doing a small, trivial action in the first chapter and then seeing the fruits of that action occur during a later chapter, again, if you happen to pay attention to the details.

I got a much higher sense of satisfaction from the game having earned these achievements than I did for any game that simply rewarded me for "congratulations, you achieved an arbitrary story checkpoint and we felt the need to reward you with something more than just continuing the plot."  I hope more game developers learn from this game's example.