Microsoft have announced the next batch of games coming to Game Pass, and just like the last line-up, indie gems are carrying this fortnight’s offerings. August begins with venerated A Short Hike, which crosses paths with fellow hiker Death Stranding on its way off the Game Pass mega mountain.
]]>Broforce was a side-scrolling riff on '80s action movies, in which you'd take control of Rambro, B.A. Broracus and others to run 'n' gun through explosive levels. I feel like most of my runs would end because I blew myself up alongside the enemies.
On August 8th, Broforce is getting one final free update. Titled Broforce Forever, it adds six new bros, introduced in a trailer below.
]]>While I've my issues with Amazon's global mega-monopoly, I can't deny that the monthly sack of games that Twitch gives out to Amazon Prime subscribers is an oft-impressive bunch. This month more impressive than most - it's a bundle of Devolver Digital's best, including Broforce, both Hotline Miami games, Strafe (much improved by updates), Crossing Souls, The Swords of Ditto and recently lauded ninja platformer The Messenger. You can grab a month of Prime (even the free trial) and once it lapses you get to keep the games, to be launched through the Twitch desktop app.
Update: Until December 31st, Twitch Prime also gives you the SNK Bundle, Hacknet: Complete Edition, Smoke & Sacrifice and Poi, all of which you get copies for yourself to keep and a spare to give to friends. The Devolver pack doesn't come with extra gifts, but is available until January 31st.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>How many bros can there be? Will they keep coming? Where do they even come from? As a wee tot I knew no bros, then suddenly I had one living in my home and it was all downhill from there. How does Broforce [official site] convert real people into bros, and could they do it to you and I? Broforce developers Free Lives show no signs of stopping. The run 'n' gunner has a new update adding bro versions of Bruce Lee, Tank Girl, Dirty Harry, and Snake Plissken (again). If they can conquer our mightiest heroes, what hope do we have? We'll surely all be bros soon.
]]>Only now that Broforce [official site] has left Steam Early Access are we actually getting some real action heroes! The first post-launch update has arrived with a Christopher Lambert double-header, adding new Bros based on Connor MacLeod, The Highlander, and Raiden out Mortal Kombat to run and jump and megamurder. Now we're talking! The 'Lightning Strikes Twice' update also added new challenge missions designed around each Bro's abilities, and handy new items like performance-boosting drugs and alien pheremones.
]]>One day I'll write a Desert Island Discs about the games I'd keep with me until the end of days, given a choice of ten. It'll no doubt be a Desert Island Digital Downloads given the absence of physical media in my life. I live with the ghosts of entertainment.
Rather than compiling the list of games I'd take to the Vault with me though, today I'm aiming to put together a collection, one from each genre, that I'd use to introduce those genres to a PC gaming newcomer, or a lapsed gamer. A friend inspired this particular bundle of joy, someone who grew up with an Amiga but developed other interests and hasn't touched a game for more than a few minutes at a time, either console or PC, for over fifteen years. A recent illness has left him unable to engage in his usual outdoor hobbies and games have filled the gap.
]]>We've written about the brilliance at the muscular heart of Broforce [official site] before. It's a run and gun platform-shooter in which tiny action heroes blow everything to pieces, using machine guns, dynamite, knives, shotguns, rocket launchers, rocket legs, rocket packs, grenades, airstrikes and flamethrowers. The fully destructible levels and agile player characters are the core of a perfectly pitched action game, hiding behind a title and theme that might suggest little more than a miserable pile of memes.
Broforce is excellent.
]]>Broforce [official site] is not a game about shoving matches in the Bas Vegas car park. No, Broforce's bros are kill-o-platforming commandos who may or may not bear some resemblance to action movie stars. Brobocop, Double Bro Seven, Rambro, Ellen Ripbro, Indianna Brones, Bro Dredd, The Brode... no, any similarities to fictional characters owned by large companies with expensive lawyers are probably just coincidences.
After a year and change in Early Access, the boisterous run 'n' gun platformer is ready to bro out and has properly launched. It's celebrating this with an explosive cartoon:
]]>When we last visited Broforce [official site], it'd just dropped a July update in time for 'Murica's fourth of July celebrations. At the time, Alice noted that developer Free Lives understood Independence Day the only way a studio hailing from South Africa could: with copious amounts of guns and dodgy American-cum-Australian-cum-Scottish voiceovers. South Africans discussing Americanisms can be hilarious. This power ballad-inspired trailer to mark Broforce's full release on October 15 is pretty funny too.
]]>Broforce [official site] understands American Independence Day like only a game made by a South African studio can. The USA is a big melting pot, so they say, which is why you'll find its July update brings a man with Nazi rocket technology and an American playing an Australian playing a Scot who's fighting for the freedom of the stars and stripes. And flexing. Everyone's flexing their guns.
Rockets, explosions, dubious claims of Celticity, and gunshows are what I understand July 4th is all about. The game's on sale right now too.
]]>Look, I don't know how to say this: someone has made an advergame for a movie and it feels... not awful? Not something made to fund other games its developers actually care about? Perhaps its creators' wildest dreams come true? I don't know what to make of this topsy-turvy world any more.
See, Broforce is a game all about nostalgia for action movie heroes of the '80s and '90s, and The Expendables is a movie series all about nostalgia for action movie heroes of the '80s and '90s. And now they're combined. Developers Free Lives yesterday released The Expendabros, a free short standalone version of Broforce starring The Expendables 3 characters. They must be dead chuffed.
]]>Ah, July 4th, that day once per year when America goes flag-flying, eagle-saluting crazy in celebration of overthrowing some vile oppressor. No idea who those villains might be, but we can all celebrate that Free Lives air dropped an update for their platforming mega-blaster Broforce one day early. Along with a couple of new characters, audio magician Joonas Turner (who's helped out with Nuclear Throne and The Swapper, among others) bestowed his voice as an announcer. Check out the details below to save the world.
]]>In order to stay true to the tone and spirit of Broforce, I have decided to compose some Broforce poetry, or Broetry, as it must be known according to The Only Laws That Matter. You are required to listen to this music while reading it. OK, let us begin. Ahem:
Broforce / Like "breakfast" spoken really fast / And with more breaking things / Puts other Early Access games in the trash / And doesn't need no stinkin' rhyme scheme / Or meter / BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
]]>Tango Fiesta has come a long way since its birth at the first Rezzed gamejam. Dragging eighties action movies kicking and kersploding into the whateverthehellwecallthisdecade-ties, it's a top-down shooter that can be played by four fist-bumping muscle-chums at a time. From the jungles of Predator to the desert islands of Paradise Punchout (may not be a real film), the trailer suggests players will be spending their time shooting everything that moves. Apart from other players - cooperation is the keyword here. Well, that and EXPLOSIONS. Early Access begins on June 4th.
]]>Broforce is a run-and-gun platformer which joyously spoofs the bellicose masculinity of action cinema. It’s available on Steam Early Access for £12/$15, but its featureset punches above its alpha status: singleplayer, online co-op, deathmatch, time trials, a level editor and more are already in a fairly well-polished state with more tweaks and content planned.
Here are three uncharitable assumptions you might have made about Broforce: it’s a ten-a-penny mindless blaster; the whole “bro” thing makes it more ironic meme than game; it’s snoresomely reverent of bygone shooters like Contra. Happily, Broforce dodges all these bullets like a spry Sly Stallone weaving through a hail of preposterously inaccurate Kalashnikov fire. On the evidence of its Early Access release, it’s actually a game of breezy invention and energetic pace which deploys both its nostalgia for action films and pixellated shooters with a lightness of touch. And, though there’s a very good deal of carnage, it enforces some degree of tactical caution - partly because even a single bullet will kill you, but mostly because the levels are wholly and very readily destructible, quickly evaporating over-eager bros in devastating chain detonations or squashing them with falling detritus.
]]>Hey bro, wanna bro out with some video games? Like any real bro, I love my VGs and I love them even more when I can get my bro on with my bros! The lesson here is: even if you're doing something ironically, you are still doing it and should feel bad (I certainly do). So look, Broforce really is named Broforce and it does star 1980s and '90s action heroes with bro-ised names like MacBrover, B.A. Broracus, and Brobocop.
If references to popular culture from when you were younger sets you off into fits of giggles, you'll adore it. However, if you can get past the questionable bro spin, it is some pretty pleasant shooty platformer fun, and something you may wish to cast an eye over now it's on Steam Early Access.
]]>Broforce is the smartest game with the dumbest name. Eighties action movies are the thematic springboard from which it leaps through the air - in slow-motion, away from an exploding nuclear power station, with a knife between its teeth - but its design is as retro as a 3d printed sculpture of the future. The blocky graphics might suggest otherwise but developers Free Lives have taken the run 'n' gun basics of Contra and spliced them with the full force of modern trends and techniques. Along with a gloriously effective arsenal, Broforce contains fully destructible scenery, variable attack patterns, exquisite particle effects and a dash of Spelunky-like compulsion. It's heading to Steam Early Access this March under the guidance of publisher Devolver and if that news doesn't make your mullet stand on end, you clearly haven't played the free Brototype. Do so immediately.
]]>A selection of YouTube comments on the latest trailer for Contra-inspired, 80s action hero-riffing, shooty platformer Broforce:
"I masturbate to this... shut up..." "Ma balls ma balls. HELL YEAH !:D" "Thats a preaty fricken epic trailor!"
And my personal favourite, "This is fuckin amazing. Hello from Russia." Hello!
]]>The headline refers to the trend for overwhelming emotional experiences in modern man-shoots. In Broforce! there is none of that. Brosplosions create ex-bros, decimating chunks of scenery and causing enemies to bounce, bleed and bellow as they perish in a fountain of red pixels. The millennia's worth of the 1980s that have been packed into the game is nothing more than a distraction because beyond the silly characters - Rambro, the Brominator - and daft title, Broforce! is a beautifully designed game. Think of it as Contra with destructible scenery and increased mobility, or a side-scrolling Cannon Fodder, or even Spelunky except with exploding everything. Barrels burst, bridges tumble into chasms, giant vehicles fall from the sky. Watch the trailer, play the free brototype and you will become a believer.
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