Josef Fares is video games’ Wes Anderson. The most common criticism of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Asteroid City director has long been that each movie he makes is only doubling further down on the stylistic tics and thematic obsessions he has pursued for the last three decades of his career – that he's always making the most Wes Anderson Wes Anderson movie yet.
The upside of that approach is that Anderson is increasingly plumbing aesthetic and structural depths that are only possible because he's been digging in this same spot for so long. Fares, similarly, has remained on the same ground. To be clear, his games are nothing like Anderson's movies. But if you played 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons back in 2013, then followed Fares' work through 2018's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:A Way Out, and on to his The Game Awards' GOTY winner, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:It Takes Two, you've seen an artist who is increasingly laser-focused on one idea. That one idea is, to put it simply, two.
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Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which has 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a remake out this week, marked the first time Fares experimented with the cooperative ideas that would become his trademark. In Brothers, you're cooperating with yourself. While most modern games ask you to use both the right and left sticks, Brothers goes further, tasking you with using your thumbs the way a piano player uses their left and right hand.
In the game, you control a little brother and a big brother as they ꦕset out on a quest to find healing for their ailing father. Big Brother, Naia, is mapped to the left thumbstick, Little Brother, Naiee, is mapped to the right. You start out with a simple task where each needs to do the same thing: roll their dad to the local doctor in a wheelbarrow. But, the game quickly asks you to do distinct tasks that only one can accomplish. Big Brother can give Little Brother a boost so that Little Brother can knock down a rope. Little Brother can squeeze be✤tween narrow bars. Big Brother can pull heavier switches.
It helps to have each brother's position on screen correspond to the thumbstick you're using to control them. Since Big Brother is on the left stick, I keep him to the left. Since Little Brother is on the right, I keep him on the right.
Managing the two different actions is a little brain breaking at first. It never quite becomes second nature, but it's exciting and innovative in a way that few games have followed up on in the nearly 11 years since it launched. What Remains of Edith Finch, which asked you to do something similarly pat-your-head-and-rub-your-belly-ish in its famous cannery sequence, is the rare exception.
But it seems that the only developer that seems to be consistently building on Brothers' ideas is Hazelight, the studio Fares founded after Brothers' breakout success. A Way Out explored similar ideas, but mapped the characters to two separate controllers. The catch was that the game could only be played co-op, with the two convict protagonists working together as they attempted to escape from prison and survive on the outside.
In Hazelight's next game, It Takes Two, the two in question were a mother and father on the verge of divorce, who were transformed into tiny dolls, and forced to navigate the perils of a suburban home and its backyard. Like A Way Out, the entire game required two-player co-op with one controlling the dad, Cody, and the other assuming the role of the mom, May, as they worked toward becoming human again (and potentially rediscovered their love in the process).
There are plenty of co-op games, but few make the players work together as closely as Fares'. Most co-op games are shooters or action games that require the players to work together to face odds that would be overwhelming otherwise, fending off hordes of zombies, or searching for supplies in the wilderness, or mining, or cooking. More than most, Fares' feel like the two roles are tied together and inseparable.
Now, Brothers is back, and you can see where it all began: with the two characters so closely knit that they're both controlled by the same person.
Brothers: A♈ Tale𒐪 Of Two Sons Remake Review - A Tale Of Two Games
The indie classic 🌱is back with a 2024 coat of paint.
