Broforce

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local, Local Wireless, and Online)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Free Lives Collection, along with Cricket Through the Ages and Terra Nil.)

Broforce is an action-platforming game in the vein of games like Contra and Metal Slug where you’re blasting through waves of enemies with endless hails of bullets. However, this game dives headfirst into testosterone-filled parody and doesn’t look back, absolutely refusing to take itself seriously, and in the process making something ridiculously silly and lots of fun.

The plot… doesn’t matter, really. It’s every ’80s action film mashed together, and very deliberately so. Throughout the game you’ll be blasting through one enemy facility after another, with terrain and buildings that deform when you attack them and the usual exploding boxes and barrels that create all kinds of havoc when set off. And pretty soon you’ll start rescuing other bros.

Oh, right, yeah, this game uses the word “bro” a lot. Every character even has “bro” in their name: Brommando, Brominator, B.A. Brorakus… and yes, every one of the literally dozens of playable characters is a direct parody of a character from an action movie, ‘roided out and antsy to start some violence, and featuring a regular move, special move, and melee attack specific to that character.

It’s all wonderfully mindless, and that’s one of the game’s greatest joys, but also its biggest problem. Whenever you rescue a character, it acts as an extra life, but you never get to pick what each “life” is. It’s kinda’ the gimmick of the game that every life in every mission is a random “bro”, and you’ll definitely like fighting with some of them more than others. You might die fighting a boss and hope your next bro has some decent distance attack and find, nope, you’ve got Brade, the Blade parody who fights primarily with a sword. And good luck surviving if you happen to draw Macbrover, the Macgyver parody who attaches explosives to everything and is virtually guaranteed to blow himself up in the process.

Still, it’s hard not to be won over by this game’s charmingly stupid presentation of over-the-top testosterone and glorified violence, rendered in the style of classic 8- and 16-bit games based on those same properties, with American flags, eagles, and biceps plastered everywhere.

For fans of runny-jumpy-shooty games, Broforce is damn near perfect. The mindless violence, the endless bullets, and the hilarious parody of America and its obsession with those things is pitch-perfect. It’s just frustrating that they stuck players with random characters at varying levels of effectiveness.

tl;dr – Broforce is an action-platformer that pumps up testosterone-fueled shooting action to parody level, with lots of characters that are amazing parodies of classic action film heroes. It’s just frustrating that you’re never allowed to choose which hero you’re playing as.

Grade: B+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Broforce

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local, Local Wireless, and Online)

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in Free Lives Collection, along with Cricket Through the Ages and Terra Nil.)

Broforce isn’t a game with resolution or framerate issues on Nintendo Switch, so the one spot where it seems like it could be improved by the Nintendo Switch 2’s performance is its loading times. With this in mind, here’s what I found out.

On the original Nintendo Switch, it took 14 seconds to start up the game until you hit the Devolver Digital logo, and another 8 to load a save file. This is cut down to 9 seconds and 2 on Nintendo Switch 2. However, the real test would be actually starting a level on the map, because this is where you’ll likely see a lot of loading screens over the course of the game. And in this area? Zero improvement – 17 seconds on both platforms.

So, sorry to tell you, but Broforce on Nintendo Switch 2 gets minimal loading time improvements, and that’s about it. Still a fun game that doesn’t really suffer on a Nintendo platform, but not exactly a game that truly benefits on Nintendo Switch 2.

tl;dr – Broforce is an action-platformer that pumps up testosterone-fueled shooting action to parody level, with lots of characters that are amazing parodies of classic action film heroes. It’s just frustrating that you’re never allowed to choose which hero you’re playing as.

Grade: B+

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