Priorities

[rynling]

This past week was The Week of Many Parties. I never thought I'd say this, but I am partied out.

I have a ton of work to catch up on, some of which really should have been done days ago. I've been hungover for about three days running, and it is possible that I may have eaten an entire pizza by myself last night.

In times like these, it's good to make a list of all the most important tasks in my life so that I can get my career back on track. Here we go:

(1) Spend a solid two hours with the game Brothers.

(2) Watch Selma while leveling up in FFIV.

(3) Don't ship MLK with Andrew Young. Don't do it.

(4) Beat FFIV.

(5) Shed tears over the tragic love story that is Golbez and Kain.

Comments

[rynling]

I haven't finished it yet, so most of my thoughts are about the gameplay.

In other puzzle adventure games like this that I've played, such as Rain and Limbo and Ico, it's usually more or less clear what elements of the scenery you need to interact with in order to move forward, simply because those are the only elements of the scenery that you *can* interact with. Brothers is somewhat difficult in that these elements are not so readily apparent. At certain points, if you don't interact with a specific thing at exactly the right place in exactly the right way, it appears inert.

To give an example, there is a spot early on in the game in which it's obvious that you need to lower a bridge by spinning a giant hamster wheel. Since neither brother will do anything when you stand inside the wheel or press the action button next to the wheel, you deduce that there's something else you need to do. South of the wheel is a rabbit pen, so it seems logical to have the younger brother drive one of the rabbits to the older brother, who will then pick the rabbit up. The older brother can't climb out of the pen with the rabbit, however, so you assume that there's got to be some way of transferring the rabbit between brothers so that the younger brother can chase the rabbit onto the wheel. You can spend a good ten minutes chasing rabbits, and it's really cute, but nothing will happen.

What you need to do to solve this puzzle is to put the younger brother into the wheel and make him walk in such a way as to turn it. Unfortunately, if the kid isn't in exactly the right place and facing exactly the right direction, the wheel won't turn. Save for trying it and getting it right the first time, there's no additional guiding indication that you can make it turn with either of the brothers.

So that's frustrating.

But when this game works, it works beautifully. Also early in the game, you follow a giant across a rocky set of cliffs, using his body to help you navigate from one ledge or platform to the next. When the brothers first meet the giant, the older one tries to protect the younger one. The giant doesn't react to either of them but merely gestures that they accompany it up the mountain. Even though no one says anything, what you're getting is that the older brother has probably never left the village, while the giant is so used to being mistrusted that it doesn't even care anymore. It's therefore really cool to see a bond of trust forming between the brothers and the giant over the course of the next fifteen minutes of gameplay so that, when the giant plunges into a huge hole in the mountain, the brothers don't even hesitate to jump in after it.

My experience with the game is thus that it's made up of passages of lovingly designed flow torn apart by brief segments of poorly set-up mechanics.

Then again, I kind of suck at games. Like, when everyone else played Journey, they were all, OMFG THREE HOURS OF SHEER BEAUTY, and I was all, I HAVE BEEN STUCK IN THIS TUNNEL FOR 45 MINUTES AND I WOULD LIKE TO LEAVE NOW PLEASE.

[renegadefolkhero]

Thanks for that. Brothers has been on my radar but I have so many things to play.

I am relieved someone else had a similar Journey Experience. I loved that game, but was SO ABSURDLY BAD at it eventually a kind stranger took pity on me and patiently led me out of the area I was stuck in. I'm terrible at most games but I've never let it stop me.