I’m breaking the rules a little this week and doing Max and the Curse of Brotherhood (Press Play 2013) a game that was released in December of 2013, but just went free for XBox Live Gold members. I have to admit that I didn’t buy the game at release (digital download only) because of the reviews that stated that the puzzles and nitpickiness of the controls made the game all but unplayable. After the game went free this month I decided to give it a try anyway because Pea wanted to play, so we downloaded it and fired it up and gave it a try.
Max and the Curse of Brotherhood is a visually adorable game. It feels like playing a Pixar movie. The game opens with Max finding a spell to make little brothers disappear on the internet and surprisingly opening a portal in the wall through which the hand of evil comes through and snatches his little brother, Felix. Oops. Of course guilt instantly gets the best of him and he jumps in after them to save Felix. When the gameplay starts we see a visually deep world that surrounds a standard platformer, which was kind of frustrating for Pea who wanted to be able to go back and forth as well as left to right. Fortunately she got used to the mechanics quickly. This game is a good mix between platformer and puzzle game. The puzzle elements come into play as Max has to use his magic marker (possessed by the spirit of the old lady that he meets in the alternate world) to draw objects to jump, climb, and ride on in order to progress through the game.Â
One thing that stuck out for Pea from the very beginning of the actual gameplay was the fact that she was not able to choose to make the protagonist, Max, a girl because “girls get irritated with their little brothers too”. And she was right, it would have been quite easy to make Max Maxine and not have to change any thing in the game itself. As it stands the only female character in game is the old woman who helps Max when he first enters the alternate world and then immediately dies so that her soul can be absorbed by Max’s magic Magic Marker.
The puzzles and platforming elements in the first part of the game really were a blast for Pea and I to complete together, but they fairly quickly scaled to the point that Pea was unable to play on her own anymore which meant that there was some serious lap co-op going on. Adding a second player mode that gave one player control of the marker and one control of Max(ine) would have been perfect for us, but our experience during the first hour was a relatively positive one.
N.B. In the gameplay that follows the puzzles continue to get harder and you begin to combine the earth, vine, and flow elements to solve the puzzles and as a puzzle gamer of 30+ years there were some puzzles that stumped even me 😉
All in all, definitely download this game if you are a Gold member, but consider waiting for a sale if you’re not. It’s a fun little game, but the puzzles need a little finessing.
