10 Genius Gameplay Tricks That Made Video Games WAY Better

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a game that surely won't be forgotten by anyone who's ever played it, largely due to how creatively it fuses one brilliantly unique gameplay mechanic with an emotionally engaging story.

The game follows two brothers as they embark on a perilous quest to retrieve a cure for their ailing father, but rather than have the player control one son while the other is controlled by either a co-op player or A.I., Brothers is actually an entirely single-player experience (except for the Switch version, which allows local co-op).

Each of the brothers is assigned to one of your thumbsticks, requiring you to control them both at the same time in order to progress.

Given that the older brother is stronger while the smaller one is more agile, you'll need to juggle their natural advantages to keep moving forward, and also pool their collective skills where necessary.

This is such a simple idea it's honestly fascinating it hasn't been done before - at least not this well - and given the deeply affecting nature of the game's story, it results in a majorly gratifying payoff.

This is far more than a gimmick - legendary director Josef Fares clearly thought about how the player would acclimate to controlling the brothers simultaneously, and also how this would help a certain late-game development land with massive impact.