Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake Review (Xbox Series X|S)

Just over a decade ago, Swedish game director Josef Fares made his explosive video game debut with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - a short platformer that delivered big on creative two-person puzzling and subtle, heartfelt storytelling. Well, 10 years on this classic has returned in the form of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake, and much of that still holds up - despite the lack of a real reason to remake it outside of the addition of local co-op play.

If you aren't aware of the 2013 original then the unique selling point was always how the game controlled. When playing solo (the only way to play in the original), you take control of both brothers at the same time - using an analog stick per-character to navigate the environment while solving puzzles and engaging in some light platforming. That, backed up by a surprisingly emotional story meant that the original stuck in the minds of many for years after launch.

And, well, most of that still rings true in 2024. The way the two brothers interact with each other during puzzles is always entertaining - the team manages to balance puzzling well in Brothers despite the unique control setup. If we're to have one nitpick it's that puzzles are often quite simple - but we'd much rather have it that way than be banging our two little heads against the figurative wall in frustration. Puzzles aren't always easy to balance in games without creating some frustration, and the team errs on the side of caution in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons - which we think helps the experience overall.

One reason we think a streamlined puzzling experience works is because it allows the game's storyline to shine. Brothers is vague in its storytelling — the characters don't actually speak English and there's no real dialogue — but you'll be invested anyway. We won't spoil much but you're two young kids out on an adventure trying to find the cure for your dying dad - and the fact that the roughly 3-4 hour adventure moves at a brisk pace means you don't have to suspend your disbelief for too long while figuring out potentially awkward puzzles. Brothers tells a short, snappy tale and is better off for it overall.

When they do crop up, the game's puzzles often revolve around the older of the two brothers doing the heavy lifting, and the younger lil' guy using his initiative to find the way forward. It's all about carving out the most efficient way to get to the 'Water of Life', and by the end you'll often know exactly what to do as the game lays out your puzzle-solving options. Again, there's nothing particularly brain-scratching in here but it all serves a purpose to propel the game's storyline forward.

An area that perhaps doesn't hold up quite as well as we'd remembered is navigating the environment itself. When playing solo, just moving around as both brothers can be awkward, especially when the camera angles get a bit weird and finicky in certain scenes. For some reason we'd have liked the option to choose which brother is controlled by which analog stick too - a couple of us here in the PX office agreed that it would've felt more natural to have the lil' guy on the left stick. We're not entirely sure why that's the case but it took our brains a while to get used to having the big bro on the left!

Thankfully this didn't cause too many issues during the more complicated platforming segments, which are largely well-balanced and nicely scattered throughout the tale. Aside from a few nasty falls when having to teach our brain that both brothers need looking after equally, we found the platforming enjoyable throughout. Some of the backdrops are gorgeous in the remake too, and when the camera pulls out as you're shimmying along a tight edge keeping both bros alive - that's when the remade visuals shine the most.

Having said that, generally speaking the 2013 original does hold up pretty well graphically, and we don't think there's a huge reason to pick this version up for the new visuals alone. As we mentioned earlier, this remake does allow for local co-op play where two people can control one brother each, and we'd imagine that's a pretty novel experience - especially for returning players. We didn't get a chance to test this out at length (unfortunately there's no online co-op either) but it's a new option that's definitely worth mentioning here.