Brotherhood Review

Brotherhood tells the story of a brotherhood of religious fanatics who spend their time performing experiments on humans in their top-secret scientific complex; a prison idden deep in the Swiss mountains. Hundreds of subjects are mutilated in an effort to create a new biological species of superhuman. You, the player, are one in a million immune to the mutagen and manage to escape.

Brotherhood is a classic take on the FPS genre; reminiscent of classics such as DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D. Navigate through levels, find secrets, kill enemies, upgrade your arsenal of weapon, find health resources and survive. You’ll also find 1-ups which allows you to revive on the spot; instead of being booted back at the start of the level.

While you start off with a simple knife, you’ll pick up a pistol early on, in order to have a chance to survive. Each level is peppered with enemies, secrets, ammo and extra lives. As you explore levels, you’ll upgrade your weaponry with new toys and all weapons remains in your inventory even after dying. Speaking of which, without any extra lives, death means being kicked back to the start of the level, which is expected.

In order to keep odds in your favor, along with your weaponry, you’ll find plenty resources to replenish your health; food, small medic boxes, big medic boxes and you can also pick up mutagen that acts as an extra layer of protection. The game features a whooping 24 levels across six acts. By finding secrets and completing levels, you can also find permanent upgrades like health or number of ammo you can carry.

The game looks great in all of its glorious pixel glory. Each level feels like a mini-labyrinth that you to have find your way around; thankfully it’s not as confusing as the early DOOM or Wolf 3D games. The areas are dark given you’re basically underground, but very well lit so no issues on that front. The soundtrack is a generic hard rock-lite score; sounds like B-sides from early DOOM games. It’s fine and fits the premise to a tee, but quite forgettable.

The first problem of the game is that about 1/3 through it, the difficulty spikes through the roof. While the first few levels are fun and properly balanced in terms of challenge, once you reach the cave, the game will pummel you over and over. And this ties in with the second problem; you can’t really just complete the levels for the sake of completing them.

You absolutely need to find all secrets because some will reward you with powerful weapons that are basically mandatory to survive the caves and the subsequent levels. Also when using a life, if you die being shot by three people, you’ll revive in the middle of the firefight; with barely any health left and little time to do anything. The last really annoying thing is the fact when you’re about to die, the screen becomes red in a way that makes it borderline impossible to see and kill enemies.

Brotherhood is a fun throwback to classic boomer shooters from the 1990s. The gameplay is tight and there’s a decent variety of weaponry to splatter pixelated blood across the walls. But the abrupt difficulty spike can really be a fun killer. If you have the necessary firepower and manage to power through, you’ll have a blast (pun intended), but if you’re looking for a fair challenge and enjoyable where you don’t have to pull your hair out, you might want to look for something else.