Max: The Curse of the Brotherhood was released last December however it the Games with Gold’s latest release package, saw Max return to the gamers of Xbox One for free. The game centres on Max, a young boy and his imaginary adventure to save his little brother Felix from the clutches of the evil using pens to create paths to make it through the platforms the game offers. But can Max stand the test of time on the Xbox One or will this be a forgotten title come 2015?
Throughout this Adventure you use Max’s ability to create water flows, grow vines and fire spells in order to work your way to Felix and free him. The game makes good use of this at the start with puzzling challenges and the introduction of enemies in the form of guards stopping Max from reaching his goal however as you get deeper and deeper into the game the challenge tends to wear off…
Although having said that the game doesn’t lose its fun factor throughout, the introduction of new abilities give the game it little refresher throughout the 7 levels of missions but by the end of the game it’s not about how to get from Point A to point B but more which ability do I use to get there. Some levels required me to look online for assistance but majority of the time it was pretty straight forward about how to complete the game.
Some of the other features Max: The Curse of The Brotherhood could use seem to lack, this game looks like one that could have used Kinect quite well but makes no use of it whatsoever, random Game DVR pop up more often than not with no real purposeful recordings and the sound in the game isn’t something to be particularly admired from a critical standpoint.
However The Curse of the Brotherhood has this undeniable charm about it and is actually fun to play throughout but only really has one play-through in all honesty, there is nothing to make you come back to help Max do the story again aside from collectables. It’s almost like the game would have massively benefited from a timing system and local leader boards in order to improve replay ability but even then you’d be hard pushed to go through Max: The Curse of the Brotherhood again.
The game offers players a satisfying reward for completing the levels as some are challenging but overall the game offers few challenges once you get into the nitty gritty of the game. For free I’d say certainly pick it up its good for around 8 hours gameplay without collecting the extras and if you want to that probably add another hour maybe 2, so your standard Arcade timing.
Tying it all together Max: The Curse of The Brotherhood is a clever game with a fun way to play through in the platform genre but just lacks the basic elements that could make it an Xbox One game to remember, in all honesty it wouldn’t be out of place on the Xbox 360 but Max does offer the player lots of fun, vibrance and lovable characters. Not Mustacho though, he can just go away and never come back!
