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Brothers is a game of moments: moments of quiet beauty, moments of joyful levity, moments of cloying dread. There's one moment that stands out above all the others, though. It's one of those moments, the ones you'll remember in years to come, a moment of revelation where you suddenly see how various threads of the game have woven together. It's also a moment that's very difficult to talk about, as it comes very close to the end of Starbreeze's compact adventure, and its details are tangled in potential spoilers.Let's start on safer territory, then. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons puts the player in control of two nameless siblings, living by the sea in a quaint and gently fantastical kingdom. We see them lose their mother in the opening scene, and then skip forward to them wheeling their sick father to the local doctor. This task also introduces us to the game's most eye-catching innovation: it's a single-player co-op game. You control both brothers at the same time, with the left stick and trigger moving the elder brother and making him interact with objects, while the same controls on the right manipulate the younger of the two.
It takes some getting used to, and introducing it by forcing the player to co-ordinate both brothers while pushing and pulling a cart is a pretty bold move. It's like rubbing your head and patting your stomach, but it forces you to immediately grasp the idea that you'll need to work together to survive what follows.
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