It’s been 10 years since I played the original Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons; I loved playing Josef’s follow up games with my wife, so I felt this was as good a time as any to revisit his original outing. This time with co-op so I could play through it with my wife.
For those that never played this before, you (or you and someone else in this version) play as two brothers that go on a journey to get medicine for their father who is very sick. The journey starts out pretty standard, but fantasy elements quickly start to appear, and “side quests” show another side of the world and the troubles people are facing. There’s no actual dialogue, as the language used throughout the game is made up. The story is told through environmental storytelling and character actions. That’s not to say the dialogue is worthless, as the delivery still portrays emotion, such as the younger brother being mischievous, happy, and scared.
It’s weird to look at this remake and think, this looks worse than I remember. It’s not so much that the original game looked better, but it feels like a lot of the limitations of the original created a style that was lost in translation. The remake doesn’t look bad, but it feels like the transfer to UE5 wasn’t optimized, as there are several areas where the camera and lighting made it difficult to determine what was happening or where the characters were. There were also some funny visual glitches, like the little brother surfing on the older brother, or just floating instead of walking.
Gameplay wise it’s the same, aside from the new co-op mode. An analog stick is used to control each brother, and their respective shoulder buttons are used for any actions that take place, such as holding an item or moving something. The puzzles throughout are all pretty simple, although the challenge generally comes from controlling multiple characters. Playing the game in co-op negates this a bit, as the controls are split across two controllers, meaning it can be played with one hand from each player.
While it can be argued that there are many more games nowadays that hit the different highs and lows of this game with much more oomph, it’s still nice to see the emotional weight put into some of these sequences, even if they don’t hit as hard as they did a decade ago in comparison.
Probably the most interesting thing to me in replaying the game was seeing the groundwork for Josef’s future games. The lead up to freeing a creature gave me It Takes Two vibes, and the general reliance on another person is clear within both his follow ups. But there are little pieces that shine throughout that make me very interested to see what Hazelight’s next game will be.
While not the best game from this esteemed director, it put him in a position to develop some truly exceptional experiences and delve deeper into some topics not often explored in the mainstream or the medium. This remake still has a lot of heart and is worth playing for anyone that missed it originally. And at just a couple hours in length, it’s not going to hurt the backlog all that much.
7 out of 10
Pros
- Heartfelt Story
- New Co-Op Mode
- Doesn’t Overstay its Welcome
Cons
- Certain Lighting and Camera Angles
- Several Visual Glitches
- More Remaster than Remake
Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons Remake was developed by Avantgarden and published by 505 Games. It is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox. The game was provided to us for review on PS5. If you’d like to see more of Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons Remake, check out the publisher’s site.
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