If you’ve ever wondered why your games moving left to right just feels right, the answer is Romans. Rome has given us a lot of things. Things like concrete, calendars, and even “adult novelties” can all be traced back to Western civilization’s biggest empire. The backbone of it all was Latin, the grandaddy of European languages and the reason most of the world reads left to right. This is why so many video games move left to right. It doesn’t account for why so many of those games involve shooting; that’s just good ol’ U.S. imperialism.
And one game on Xbox Game Pass has mastered the thrill of moving right and shooting everything in your way, ‘Merica-style.
Broforce Forever is the final update to the indie sensation first released in 2016. The premise is simple. A roster of action hero send-ups is at your disposal as you obliterate wave after wave of bad guys, bosses, and destructible environments. It’s steeped in self-aware humor that adds laughs to an action game that is an absolute blast to play.
The premise behind Broforce borrows a lot from one of its most prominent bros, Rambo (a.k.a. Ram-bro). You’re on a mercenary mission to rescue good guy POWs trapped in Vietnam-inspired jungle levels full of troops, traps, and things that go boom. On the surface it’s an adrenaline-fueled throwback to the Contra era of retro gaming where players were given increasingly bigger guns as they moved through a level making rescues until they fought a big bad at the end. Fortunately, the scale of Broforce Forever isn’t as big as its bravado and you can finish the campaign in about eight hours.
The driving mechanic of the game is the bros themselves. There are 40ish bros on the roster, all themed after some sort of action hero icon. The more POWs save, the more bros you unlock. This list ranges from big titular movie characters like Rambro and Brobocop to lady bros like Ellen Ripbro (Alien), Tank Bro (Tank Girl) and The Brode (Kîll Bill). Each bro has their own unique attacks and abilities, and the game automatically switches your character after you’ve rescued a POW or if you lose all your health.
This bro-hopping is a bit of a mixed bag. If you’re just looking to play a game and have some fun, it’s no big deal. But if you want to knuckle down and try for some completionist goals, it can be frustrating to switch to a character that is a terrible match against a boss, forcing you to start over again.
The other big mechanic driving each level is demolition. There are a lot of explosions in the game and each one actually destroys terrain. This is less of an issue in single-player. But if you play in co-op mode (which you absolutely should, because its pure chaotic fun), you’ll likely have a situation where your group of trigger-happy bros has decimated a level to the point where you can no longer move forward because all that remains is a smoldering crater. This is less of an issue if you’re just in it for some laughs, but it can be frustrating if you’re trying to make meaningful progress.
The Broforce Forever update that launched on August 8 added six new bros to the roster, alongside some bug fixes and a few tweaks to the campaign. It’s the final coda to a remarkable seven-year run as one of the most over-the-top pieces of satire in gaming, delightfully skewering American machismo at the hands of its big-screen icons.
This is the perfect game for a weekend distraction — or as a palate cleanser if you’ve spent too much time trying to get laid in Baldur’s Gate 3.
