This game absolutely sucks. The graphics are just what you’d expect from a `1998 Quake engine game. The problem isn’t the visuals, it’s the sluggish, stilted game play. The weapons are painfully underpowered. You will spend several clips at point blank range to kill the most basic of grunt enemies.

This was a failed attempt at building an FPS around story and characters, The story feels like a Mountain Dew commercial and the characters excrete 90s extreme ‘tude. Somewhere in the process they forgot that video games are supposed to be fun. It includes such genius design quirks as being killed by closing locker doors and rats. The last third of the game starts with one of the worst water levels ever designed. I eventually just turned on an invincibility cheat and finished the game. Even that was tedious.

I didn’t immediately warm up to this platform shooter. For one thing, it’s very twitchy, chaotic, and brutally unfair at times. Broforce feels like it’s another, more-stylized version of Super Meat Boy. One wrong step and you are dead! You’re expected to try, try, try again. I was prepared to just rage quit this game but then a routine game patch intervened. The game just stopped working for me and I set it aside. (Citrix Workspace and the Unity Engine don’t play nice together)

Fast forward a year or two or ten and a new update to the game was released that fixed my problems and added half-a-dozen or so new bros. I thought it was time to revisit Broforce. In the interim, I had discovered that I like unrelenting bullet-hell shmups. I’m now team spaz-gaming! My attitude had been adjusted and I think I am a Broforce convert.

So, the game isn’t quite as perfection-based as I thought it was. There is a huge random element in terms of which of the twenty or so characters you are forced to play. Once you start to understand the abilities of each of the bros you begin to learn how to use their skills to combat the seemingly overwhelming odds against you. Certain characters are useless on some levels and you just have to die and try again. But when a particular character clicks, it’s invigorating!

The one thing that I loved about this game, even when I hated it, was the Randy “Machoman” Savage-inspired narration. There’s something about the screams of, “YOU CAN DO IT!!!” that tickles me every time. Also, the game has multiple endings based on how you approach the final task that are a direct descendant of Jordan Mechner’s Karateka. Well done and hilarious.