The game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons promises some unique gameplay mechanics, a moving storyline, and "single player co-op". What? You mean I'm meant to cooperate with myself? I'm not sure that I consent to do such things.
In any case, this game fancies itself as a work of art, telling, as its title suggests, the Tale of Two Sons, and we mean a tale, not a tail.
In the opening scene, you witness the tragic loss of a motherly figure, a lone young boy on a boat. That boy, slightly older, then mourns at a gravestone, before he is met by an older boy carrying what appears to be a fatherly figure in a wheel barrow, who is coughing up various bits of lung as though he has some sort of consumption.
Then, you get the deep end - figure out how to control both of these characters, at once, (by yourself) to get this fatherly figure to some other location (presumably that contains some medical aid)
Once you figure this out, the journey begins, and the puzzles start.
First and foremost, and the most important puzzle: why do I need to control these two figures on my own? Why can't I play with a friend? Oh, I have an explanation for this. Because you'll never find a friend that would want to play a tedious game like this with you. If you do, that's not a friend, that's your split personality... and oh, hey, back to the review.
The first puzzle is simple enough - the young lad is too weak to pull the big lever, so you must do it with the bigger one. The second puzzle is simple, boost the little lad up with the big lad, then throw down a rope for him to climb up.
Now, get them to both turn a crank to get a lift to elevate the wheel-barrow containing the still coughing man.
This lift sequence took too many moments of my life away from me. Moments that I will never again get to enjoy doing literally anything else. That sequence took what felt like three or five minutes, the old man quietly (or in fact, rather loudly) coughing and sputtering as with no sense of urgency these two male brothers dutifully turned a wheel that made me immediately think...
"Oh, I bet this game has twenty hours of gameplay because of terrible pacing decisions like this".
It probably does. It is probably in place for a story-telling reason, for the fact of pacing, to allow your mind to wander and think, and to impart some suspense and urgency onto the story, or rather - to allow you to meditate upon your own conclusions about life, the universe and everything else.
This game thoroughly reminds me of the sequence in "Check it Out! With Dr Steve Brule", a comedy show on Adult Swim, whereby the titular Steve Brule pretends to have a brother, Stan Brule. If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch this sequence of amazing:
"I have a 150 jet skis"
Having said all of this, the game is pretty charming. It gets a very Peter Molyneux sort of world building style going on here, with a sense of wonder like that of the Black and White series.
And this is the sentence that made me revisit the game while typing these words. For you see, as per the game's description from Steam:
Guide two brothers on an epic fairy tale journey from visionary Swedish film director, Josef Fares and top-tier developer Starbreeze Studios. Control both brothers at once as you experience co-op play in single player mode, like never before.
Oh, but then I MUST. For this is a visionary. I like visionaries. Sometimes I think I may just be one myself. I'm often wrong. The other thing I noticed at this point, which the game didn't tell me...
Notice: Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons requires a controller to play
Perhaps I should be using my controller instead of a keyboard. Perhaps that would make the game more tolerable? Wait - tolerable, you say?
Before long, I found myself feeling like I needed to persevere with the game, and to let it grow on me, the same way any relationship with a sibling should do. Only, I know not this joy (or misery) as an only child.
Playing with a controller is a slightly more enjoyable experience, but it doesn't take long to see the standard two player / coop tropes come through via good, albeit vanilla game design.
Where Brothers Shines is that it does what other games do well, things like Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and other games with those "coop" AI companions that help you climb a thing, or unpluzzle a thing - except here, you do it all yourself.
The pacing isn't helped by the controller, and after not very long at all, I decided to give up on the title - it didn't feel polished enough for 2020, or enough of a strong hook to engage me.
I guess I don't get it, as a single child. And that's fine by me.