Playing A Game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons PC

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons invites - provokes, on occasion - comparison to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Like Team Ico's productions, Brothers tells a slightly-touching story of juvenile innocence. It takes place in a world whose initial tranquility belies dark, sometimes morbid fantasy (seriously -- don't make the mistake of assuming that this is a kid-friendly game). It relies on character and environmental cues to convey its mechanics, only very rarely showing button prompts on-screen. It does a splendid job of building environments around puzzles, and vice-versa, to make you feel as if you're really engaging with the game world as you play.

It also has controls that will confuse the absolute shit out of you at first, only to become mildly irritating over time. But, considering you're controlling two characters at the same time, that's totally understandable.

Brothers does a really excellent job of exploring various ideas using this two-character mechanic. Sometimes you'll need to use one brother to help the other; sometimes you'll need one brother's unique attributes to continue on. And sometimes you'll need to control both in close coordination, such as when paddling a boat, or in cooperative rock-climbing. These parts are the clear highlights of the game, and the number of these unique scenarios the game invents is pretty impressive.

As for the story, it's applied with a light touch, but probably not as light as it should be. Misfortune and death are ever-present forces throughout the brothers' journey, and the game does a great job of alluding to horrific and terrible events without showing most of them directly. But it also spends too much time in fake-dialog, with characters gibbering non-language at each other, when a quick facial expression or hand gesture would do. To me the gibberish dehumanized the game's characters, which is a shame, since the situations they find themselves in are so emotionally evocative.

The ending, though, the ending is good. At least the game doesn't end on a low note.

As a brief aside regarding the game's technical fidelity: the PC "features" of Brothers are a bit of a let-down, particularly considering it's an Unreal Engine game. Other than screen resolution, there aren't any meaningful graphics options to fiddle with; and the visual quality of the models and textures makes it pretty clear this was made for 720p. And of course, while it's understandable that Brothers would recommend a controller, requiring it seems like a cheap way out of attempting a mouse-and-keyboard scheme.

While it shouldn't necessarily be surprising that Brothers is short - about two or three hours, in line with other downloadable puzzle-adventures of its ilk - it did surprise me, when I was finished, that it had been so brief. With the depth and detail lavished on the game's numerous locales, it feels much bigger than it really is. In a good way.

Brothers has just enough design and execution problems that I wouldn't really call it a triumph. But it does enough right to be fun to play, and - crucially - it nails the design of its two-character mechanic really well. If only for that reason, I expect Brothers, like Shadow of the Colossus, to be remembered with much more fondness than when it was played.

Better than: Limbo
Not as good as: Fez
Alternate title suggestion: Co-Princes of Persia, what with all the jumping and climbing these kids can do.

Progress: Finished.

Rating: Good