In a world where terrorists, CEOs, bankers on Wall Street, and the chap that does all those Cillit Bang adverts plot the downfall of all humankind while laughing a lot and probably doing drugs and doing all the sex with the women who take the monies, we feel safer that one army will defend our freedoms and leave no building standing or anyone alive afterwards.

Broforce, ACTIVATE!

Seriously….the fact that this game exists, means there is some form of god. A god who perhaps had a bit too much time on his / her hands and who has seen every action film ever made and decided that Team America and the Expendables were not enough.

Made by the clearly bat-s**t crazy fun-loving people at Free Lives Games, Broforce is a side-scrolling run and gun platform video game in the style that we used to know and love on consoles from years ago. At this point remains on Steam Early Access with the goal being the full release going out in 2015, so what you get at the moment is the work in progress.

So what the hell could this over the top blow the crap-out-of-everything-a-thon possibly be? Well you play as one of a number of err… bros, all pretty much the ultra hyper nipples harder than bullets masculine action hero lone gunman commando, who fights terrorists, their dogs, trucks and god knows what else. At certain points you have to rescue various other bros who got caught and put into cages dotted around destructible levels.

The levels end when you shoot a devil in a nice suit who for some reason is laughing all the time and hoist an American flag, at which point a helicopter comes along for some reason. Jump on and then the scenery explodes while you get a lovely little picture of how many bad guys you killed, to the sound of over the top rock music. Oh and remember, you “liberated” the area.

Basically that is the formula right there for the game. But that is not the whole story as what this truly is.

Go with the bro.

On the surface you would not think it, but a lot of thought actually went into this, and it’s truly a work of love for the subject matter. As paradies go, this should feature among the best for the simple fact of how many bro puns they manage to squeeze in for all the action heroes on show here. Bromanndo, Rambro, Indiana Brones, Bro Hard, Robrocop, it just goes on and on.

Every time you unlock a new bro, there is a sense of amazement and a strange wave of nostalgia in some respects of past bros you’ve seen destroy countless enemies, buildings, governments and jungles.

They also each have a unique play style, with Brade (yes…they just keep coming) just using his wicked sword to slice through enemies, Bromando is just ultra violent with a Rocket Launcher, and the Bro in Black (stop groaning at the back) using his sci-fi doohickey to blow up everything within a given radius.

This ensures that in a way, you have to keep changing it up slightly as you progress and rescue the other bros for extra lives as when you do, you change to another of the Broforce.

May the broforce be with you

The levels themselves are also challenging, but only if you want to navigate around things. Remember, this is Broforce and where required, you can just shoot your way through the landscape and open up new ways through the level. The enemy variety is fairly good, but once you seen one horde of suicide bombers and ultra big helicopters which take 123 shots to kill, the meh factor may start to seep in.

The controls are nice and easy, with keyboard or joypad working well, the online multiplayer option providing the opportunity to make a mess with your real bros, and the level editor actually allows for the community to come up with new ways to blow stuff up all over again. The fact that this is in early access at present and actually works really well, shows that a lot of time has already gone into the production so it’s not so much of a risk as other early access games which are still in progress at the moment.

However, one may make some arguments about the whole affair getting a bit samey after a while and you would be right, there is going to be a point where the joke gets really old and it’s no longer fun to roam around and you’d be better letting the bros retire.

Excellent broformance.

But what this is, is just pure simple fun, taking the royal action p*ss out of pretty much everything we kids from the 80s and 90s grew up watching.

With the recent resurgence of over the top action, in the guise of Escape Plan, the aforementioned Expendables and Frozen (err….perhaps not that last one, not unless Arnie was going to win an Oscar for singing as the Snow Queen), this perfectly soaks up a lazy Sunday evening and is nice to come back to as way of spending a few minutes away from the silliness of it all.

What more could you possibly ask for?

Win a copy of Broforce!

Given that this old blog post was largely in favour of what is a fundamentally funny shooty game, what would be even better during the festive season than to offer you a copy?

All you have to do if you wish to save the world by being an awesome bro, is to write in the comments the best / worst Broforce pun and it will be yours one way or another. Given that literally one entry was posted before and that was the winner for the Watch Dogs PC code earlier in 2014, you could write any old crap at this point and still win without any effort!

Closing date is 17th January 2015 with the winner being announced here and the twitters. F**k yeah!