Broforce! Say it aloud. Speak its name and be happy, for it is exactly the game that the name suggests it will be. Over on Eurogamer, the ever-lovely Jeffrey Matulef argued that it’s the action-adventure that Ubisoft’s rather miserable Expendables 2 should have been. It’s hard to improve on that description, really, so I won’t try. Instead, here are a few paragraphs on why I like it so much.
Broforce is basically a blend of Contra, Super Mario Bros, and Super Crate Box. You race around levels shooting stuff, you can blow the beautifully chunky pixelated environments to pieces as you go, and each time you rescue a hostage, you respawn with a new weapon. This last part, as with SCB, is where things get really hilarious, incidentally, as all of the action heroes you swap between come with their own specific arsenal, and they tend to be riddled with weaknesses as well as strengths.
Mr T’s shotgun is rubbish over long distances, for example, while Chuck Norris’s flamethrower is a little too good at eating through vital parts of the environment. I can’t work out who it’s meant to be that’s chucking dynamite around but, well, he’s chucking dynamite around – and that’s never going to end well.
You can play the game in local co-op right now for free if you’re packing a PC and want to download the prototype, but there will apparently be online multiplayer as well when the whole thing’s properly finished. It’s the work of South African team Free Lives, by the bye, and I already love it ever so, ever so much. Those guys should get a Greelight page together or something. Oh, they have.
I’ll probably write some more about this one day when I don’t have a massive headache.
