New games of course. I'd finally got some cash together, and fortuitously, found a lot of great games at extremely good prices. After leaving the 360 in a corner until mid December, I spotted Call of Juarez: Gunslinger going cheap on XBLA. Purchase made. Tomb Raider and Metro: Last Light followed soon after when I snuck them into the trolley during the Christmas food shop. Gunslinger turned out to be fantastic, especially since I only downloaded it because it was cheap. With a great narrator, and some clever narrative tricks of its own, it felt like playing a cross between Bastion and top quality Sergio Leone movie.
Tomb Raider followed shortly afterwards and it was truly excellent. Rhianna Pratchett and Crystal Dynamics have somehow achieved the impossible. Firstly, they've turned Lara Croft into a normal human being who gets thrust into an incredible situation and is forced into some incredible actions. Secondly, they have made a game that can do the ancient tombs and spectacle that Uncharted does so well, without it feeling like an Uncharted clone. It did put me through the wringer though, and I decided I needed something whimsical and nice before I plunged into the famously grim Metro: Last Light. So, on the 30th of December I paid for Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. By the 31st of December, it was my game of the year.
Brothers came across in the demo as mixture of Ico, Journey and Fable, a sort of co-operative single player game set in a pre-industrial fairytale village. It felt light and whimsical, and it was beguilingly beautiful, exactly what I needed after the emotional gauntlet of Tomb Raider. I got one over on the local bully, I played catch, helped a rabbit win some friends and met a helpful troll who threw me over a crevasse. The demo ended and I decided that I needed to own this game. Funds were tight though and I had to put off buying. Then it showed up on XBLA after Christmas for a pittance. Decision made.
After purchase, Brothers quickly revealed something else, the whimsy that I loved was tempered by a Limbo-esque dark heart. The game begins with a traumatic flashback and opens for real with one of the titular brothers knelt at a gravestone. From there, the tone stays dark, with you wheeling the brother's father to a doctor in a cart. According to the doctor, the only way to save him is with water from the tree of life. Cue an epic Journey across a vast and diverse world. The brothers visit a mine, traverse an ice filled river, cross a forest with only a flaming torch for defence, visit a vast castle, cross a very special battlefield, and work their way through an arctic village. You have to work the story out yourself. The language of the game is entirely fictional a-la Ico but in a clever twist, is not subtitled. Thankfully the stellar characterisations help making sense of the story simple, and many of the events would be universally understandable whether there was language or not.
There are betrayals, rescues and romance. There is levity, wonder and grief. Every vista is beautiful. There is spectacle everywhere in this game, but it's nothing like the bombast of something like Tomb Raider. Brothers wants to show you beautiful things. It wants to make you gasp and smile. It wants you to experience childlike wonder with every discovery. However, every moment of joy is hard won and often tempered by a crashing comedown. There is tragedy in this world, some of it directly connected to the Brothers, some of it around them. It all adds up to one of the most beautiful, affecting and genuinely sad games I've ever played. Like The Walking Dead, Brothers is a rollercoaster of emotions and it will stay with me for a very long time. The ending was especially poignant, and marks the first time ever that I've welled up at a game. It wasn't a full blown cry, but the eyes definitely weren't dry.
If you like any of the games I've compared Brothers to, you owe it to yourself to play this game. If you like indie games, you owe it to yourself to play this. Same if you do the games are art thing or if you like a good old cry. Actually, you should just play this. You can't afford to miss it. It's really that good.
Game of the year 2013.
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