A Two Brothers Review... Where's My Gameboy?

Written By: Tyler Selig

Fighting on a cliff can only end well.

Rating: 8.5*

Verdict: Two Brothers is a wonderful retro-inspired game with an interesting concept and solid core gameplay underneath it all so it isn’t just another love letter to the past that offers nothing else but nostalgia.

            Nostalgia isn’t something that is uncommon in video games. Despite not being an extremely old form of entertainment/art, gamers who have enjoyed the craft for a long time often look back fondly on the olden days. In indie games especially, due to having fewer people working on a title or just a general love for the different styles, the 8 or 16 bit eras have been mined extensively. It is less popular for AAA titles to do this because they have the money and manpower to develop more expansive and detail-intensive games. It almost seems too easy to get popular within the indie community by calling forth ye olden days, but that isn’t to say that it’s a bad stylistic choice (I come from those same graphically primitive days and can definitely appreciate them) when used correctly. Two Brothers looks, feels, plays and sounds like a Gameboy game, only modernized and updated.

                In Two Brothers – not to be confused with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons because Google seems to love directing me to that game – you play as Roy, and you have discovered something rather, er, scientific. You’ve figured out there’s an afterlife by killing yourself and the game takes you on a whacky but heartfelt journey focused on that and bringing different colours into the world that you inhabit. 

                When I say focused, I mean focused. The core concepts of the game are based on having an Afterlife Hub. You die like in any Adventure/RPG, but only instead of simply saying “Game Over,” you are transported to a world in the sky, where you can talk to NPCs that are deceased or get clues on what to do. Yes, sometimes you have to die in order to advance the story.

                It’s an extremely interesting idea, and one that I think will get ripped off by other titles in the future, because it gives Two Brothers a different feel than a lot of games these days. I’m not saying there hasn’t been anything like this done before (I just can’t think of another instance off the top of my head), but it does so with a lot of finesse. It also speaks to what I feel Two Brothers does best – it harkens back to the old school, but it embraces post-modern/meta-fiction tendencies by turning the artform of what we know as “Video Games” on its head. 

                This extends beyond just dying and into every other aspect of the game. It dissects the medium even in the way NPCs talk. Forgive me but I don’t know how many developers there actually was, but I saw them say that they play all games. This is pretty telling because when the NPCs talk, it’s clever in the same type of way The Cabin in the Woods was for movies. They clearly love RPGs and adventure games, but are aware of the clichés that exist within them, and they use that very well for laughs. It’s a funny game and I chuckled quite a few times by what they were saying or what I was doing (like pushing someone to a destination in order to advance the plot). 

Story of my life.

                The plot is interesting for sure, and to be honest it’s a little weird… in a good way. You ride a big turtle to an island, and weird creatures/characters pop up and talk to you. You also are not always completely sure what’s going on because the game messes with you by having the game fuzz out, for example. Things happen and you don’t always know what to make of it. Two Brothers has an interesting cast of characters and I always found myself wanting to see how everything advanced, and the idea of returning colour to the world is a fun one, because it’s retro visually and plays with that.

                When you try to stay too true to the idea of retro gaming, such as playing on a Gameboy, it does limit the depth of the gameplay, and while I found Two Brothers fun, the actual action doesn’t really hold up to Indie Heavyweights in the genre such as Bastion. You have ranged attacks and melee, and there are a bunch of different weapons you can use, but ultimately there’s only so much you can do with two buttons and the action wasn’t always quite as engaging as it could have been. But with that said, I feel that they pushed it about as far as they could go, and I never stopped enjoying myself because it gave me interesting enemies and pretty clever bosses. It’s still fun in the same way A Link to the Past is still fun. You don’t really need complex button combinations to make a fun game, but sometimes they help.

                The game is non-linear though, something that wasn’t as big as it is now back in the day, so to anybody who doesn’t want their hand to be held through this type of game… it’s obviously not Skyrim or GTA5 big but the game does give you choices of what to do next both in the main story and the side-quests that actually do have some depth to them.

                I really enjoyed the music and I’d like to own the soundtrack (but I’m kind of poor… hey the PS4 is coming out tomorrow). I felt that they did a really great job of keeping it old school but crafting memorable songs that fit every mood. Are you on Adventure Road? Well here’s a song that hits you in the face hard and makes you feel like you’re on an adventure. Want something a little more subtle and somber? Gotcha covered for those more “dem feels” moments. There are even some songs that can put you on edge… I was legit creeped out when I was harassed by someone named ??? the first time (it also helped how the game handled that visually). It reminded me a lot of some of the more menacing music of the game OFF, one of my favourite RPGs in the last ten years.

                The writing is mostly strong, but while some people felt that the beginning scene was really emotional and sad, I felt it was dampened a bit by awkward writing. The game isn’t full of uneven writing, but it does happen on occasion, so it’s worth pointing out. Though for the most part the NPCs are well-written so there’s a lot of charm there.

                I also was not a fan of the collision detection. Sometimes you just get stuck on things that you really shouldn’t, and sometimes you are trying to walk across something and you fall but you were totally on it and that lead to frustration. Like the writing, it’s not a massive problem but it exists and therefore should be mentioned.

                But all-in-all, Two Brothers is a success. It was a game that I had heard about during the original Kickstarter Campaign, but was unable to actually give money. They got my money now, and the game lived up to what I expected in almost every way. It’s deliciously retro, and while it doesn’t redefine that look it does a great job of taking us back to those days. Two Brothers is another example of why you don’t need a huge studio to make a thrilling and highly entertaining video game.

* At launch, this game was extremely buggy. However, the developers are working diligently and listening to complaints and criticisms and are doing all they can to patch it. As of writing this, they have released one update, but I am not entirely sure to what extent the game was fixed, so my rating reflects the original build and not a fixed one. If it is fixed, then you can probably up my score by .5. If some of these bugs never get fixed I’d even knock the game down .5 or a full point because there are some serious game breaking bugs here and there such as appearing outside of rooms and being unable to advance.