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Broforce: Bros on Parade

Company: Devolver Digital

Within the first few seconds of playing, you know what you’re in for. Broforce is a completely over the top, hilarious compilation of explosions, all things badass, and bros. One of the funniest and most enjoyable parts of the game is unlocking bros. You never know who you’re going to get next.

The Bros are references to famous action hero characters like John McClane of Die Hard, Walker from Walker, Texas Ranger, Mr. T. from The A-Team, MacGyver (I’m guessing on this one, I mean, who else would carry around an exploding turkey?), and Rambo. But lest you think this is only an old 70’s and 80’s bro party, even bros like Blade gets in on the action later. Well, they’re all bro-fied names, so you’ll get characters named "Indiana Brones" and "Conan the Brobarian" for example. There are some unexpected entries such as the main characters from Boondock Saints, so part of the fun is seeing what Bro you’ll unlock next. There are even some "honorary" bros that I won’t spoil for you. Suffice to say you don’t need to be male to get the Bro treatment in this game. Future updates promise more bros, and since input is coming from the fan community, you know this is going to be fun.


Broforce seems like a simple sidescroller at first, but there’s so much more to it than that. The environment is completely destructible, save for a few special ladders and metal platforms. If you see it, you can blow it up. Sometimes this works to your detriment, as it’s easy to go trigger happy and dig yourself into a hole from which you can never escape. Another thing it does is set up the playing field for chain reaction fun. Some enemies will blow themselves up, so if you can spook them into something else that explodes, they can set off a chain reaction of explosions. Your bro may be very easy to kill, but so are your enemies. Pretty much a touch of anything will kill a bad guy. They even fall to their deaths, which is uncommon for a run-and-gun game like this. The real fun, or shall I say, art of this game comes from manipulating your environment to get maximum destruction and combination kills.

Is there a story? Do you need one? Some modes of Broforce are in beta, so there might be story coming. For now, there’s a map conquering mode that seems to point to a larger goal, which might end up being story-motivated. Until then, Broforce is mainly focused on blowing up stuff and shooting guns.

Lots of gameplay modes promise a lot of variety for Broforce. It’s too early for me to fully evaluate the game as many of these modes, such as Multiplayer, are in Alpha. I wasn’t able to get any Multiplayer games up and running, and it seems clear that the World Map Mode has more features coming to distinguish it from the regular game mode. Deathmatch, Explosion Run, and Race all require more than one player and can host up to 4. These are all available offline as well. I’m always a fan of multiplayer games that allow a person to sit down and play next to you, so this is great.


Broforce does get a bit repetitive, with the first 10-20 levels really blending into each other before things really start to change up. You can see little hints of things to come with things like a bee's nest that you can drop on opponents to send them stunned and running. We are talking about a game in Alpha stages, however, so there’s plenty of tweaking, fun stuff, and streamlining that can yet be achieved.

Alright, Broforce is really fun. This is like all the action movies and arcade games of the 80's combined with my juvenile sense of humor - which is really one in the same since I never grew up. Even in its unfinished state, I fully recommend giving Broforce a chance.



-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications
AKA Christin Deville

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