The Other Brothers

Nostalgia will only get you so far. It doesn't matter how many wistful sighs your game creates, or how many cheeky references to bygone gaming eras you pack it with, you still need a solid core of interesting and engaging gameplay.

Unfortunately, that's where The Other Brothers stumbles. For all of its Mario aping antics, a broken control scheme and a series of jagged difficulty spikes means you'll spend more of your time frustrated than fixated.

The game is a riff on Super Mario Bros., except rather than plumbers the siblings here are mechanics, and rather than inhabiting a cute fantasy world they eke out a living in a grimy city controlled by the mob and inept cops.

Despite the grittier setting, The Other Brothers is very much a homage to the platform genre's past. You leap around the pixel-art levels bouncing on bad guys' heads and grabbing tool boxes that give you extra powers for a while.

You'll find a pattern-following boss at the end of each chapter, three lives sitting at the top corner of the screen, and oil cans to collect to increase your score. Pigeons act like Sonic's rings, giving you an extra chance if you get hit. No pigeons in your pocket means you're going to die the next time a bullet or a fist finds you.

Unfortunately, those pigeons can fly away, which can be incredibly annoying when you're fighting a boss and need a quick health hit to finish him off. It's just one of a handful of annoyances that spoil The Other Brothers before it has a chance to shine.

The key problem is the controls. A D-pad sits in the corner of the screen, but it's constantly repositioning itself when you lift your thumb up, jumping to wherever you move your digit and missing the fact that you wanted to move in that direction.

In a genre that demands precision, that's just not good enough. You can fall off ladders by moving left or right, and trying to grab hanging chains by tapping up is an exercise in soul-crushing anguish. Throw in a difficulty curve that makes you consider giving up gaming entirely and you're left with a dish that looks lovely but turns to ash in your mouth.

It's a painful shame, because The Other Brothers holds so much promise. In its current state, though, it's really rather difficult to recommend.

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