MadCap's Game Reviews - "Broforce"

You know my love of games that are quirky as all get out? I think I've mentioned it a few times. Broforce is not exactly quirky in the usual vein I go for, but I decided to go for it anyway given my love of stupid action movies and guns (lots of guns), and I am so, so very glad I did.  I'll go ahead and say it, this game is absolutely brilliant. You run, you gun, you slice, you blow things up, and you do it all in the name of America!

The entire game, in which you take command of America's elite squad of complete and utter badasses (known as the "Broforce"), is an unapologetic love letter to the action films of the 80s and 90s, with a few references to modern franchises that are just bursting with overpowering testosterone. All the names have been changed to avoid copyright, but it's very clear who "Rambro", "The Brominator", "Ellen Bropley", and others are supposed to be. And, so long as the player rescues the hostages held in cages by the various enemies, they can cycle through the entire Broforce pretty much with impunity.

That being said, don't think this is an easy game by any means. On the basic difficulty setting, it starts out fairly simple so you can learn the controls - fighting terrorists across the world in the name of America.  But as you go on, the difficulty curve ramps up nice and good to the point where you're fighting the Devil himself in Hell. It's some run and gun goodness, not going for the usual first-person shooter of dudebro culture. Every figure has two attacks (usually a shoot and a melee, though there are some exceptions) and a super attack that has a variety of effects ("Brobocop" will target multiple enemies, "Brolander" will destroy enemies with lightning, etc.). All kinds of attacks can destroy the environments, allowing unique solutions to problems a player may face in a combat situation.

Also, it's worth noting that while the game does let you brute force your way through a good bit of it, there are many situations where that's not the best approach for a simple reason - you're a glass cannon. You can rain the destructive wrath of God on terrorists, burn the acid right out of alien menaces, and even throw a grenade into the throat of the Devil himself without a worry...but the moment that random terrorist gets a shot off on you, you're a dead man.  Of course, if you have other lives to play around with it becomes less of a problem, but you start out with no lives in the beginning of levels and have to rescue teammates (kept as hostages by the various baddies) to have any extra lives.

And believe it or not, this is on the lower difficulty setting.  The other one is called "Ironbro" and has a permadeath status for any bro that falls. Having taken as long as I did to figure out what I needed to in order to beat the game...let's just say I'm immensely glad for the revolving door of badassery we have available to us.

That all being said, this game is immensely fun and definitely is a good challenge even on the regular difficulty.  The later levels are the stuff of epic legend, charging into Hell itself to battle Satan for America! It's indeed like something out of a cheesy 80s action movie.  Which, I think, was entirely what they were going for. So, needless, to say, it worked like a charm.

HIGH FIVE ME, BROS!!!

Broforce was developed by Free Lives and published by Revolver Digital for PC, OS X, Linux, and Playstation 4.

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