If there's one game that perfectly encapsulates the advantage games have over other media, it might just be Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It's one thing see a empathize with a protagonist's struggles, witnessing them unfold in a book or a movie. The interactivity of games allows us to make those struggles our own.

There's no way to talk about Brothers without spoiling it, so here goes nothing. In Brothers, you control the two titular sons simultaneously: the left stick and trigger control the older brother, and the right stick and trigger control the younger brother. Several scenes of standard action-adventure unfold until, at the climax of the game, the older brother is mortally wounded, and dies from his injuries.

Now, we play as only the younger brother--left alone in the world. And we perceive this, playing with a stilted one-hand control scheme. The older brother's death is felt by the player, through the now useless left side of the controller.

Until of course, the younger brother reaches a creek he must cross to progress--in spite of his fear of water. You can walk the younger brother to the edge of the water and watch him refuse to enter, as he did throughout the game. Eventually, the player realizes that the younger brother can be encouraged, by pressing in the older brother's trigger. It's undoubtedly an impressive moment.

I found myself, after the older brother's passing, absentmindedly twirling the now lifeless left analog stick. Maybe this was my own form of denial. In it's own way, Brothers allowed me to experience the younger brother's loss along with him.

I think, though, the Brother's downfall is that, this moment of "mechanics as metaphor", as well-designed as it is, is all Brothers has to offer. You can tell Brothers was conceived as a mechanic first, as a game second, and as an story last. About all we really know about the two playable characters is written right there in the title.

The problem with this approach is that, the best metaphor means nothing if the characters it embodies aren't ones we care about. The controls enable us to empathize with the characters, but there is unfortunately nothing there for us to latch onto. Playing Brothers, I was emotionally moved, but because I thought back to my own experiences with loss, not the specific example Brothers actually depicts.

I said at the start that Brothers is the game most emblematic of what games as a medium can do that books and film cannot. But, Brothers falls short of actually putting its own concepts into action. Cereza and the Lost Demon is a game that probably took inspiration from Brothers. We control two characters simultaneously: the witch Cereza and the demon Cheshire. There is actually a similar moment to Brother's twist too: Cereza and Cheshire have an argument, leading to the two splitting up briefly. Playing with only one hand, we can feel Cheshire's absence.

There is no doubt Brothers did this concept better than Cereza and the Lost Demon. But it is the latter game that caused me more emotional resonance, simply because I actually cared about Cheshire, and I did not care about the older brother.

Brothers is undoubtedly a landmark title in our medium, but equally it is a cautionary tale. Brothers' commitment to its concept is admirable--but in doing so it loses sight of what really makes art matter.