There’s no one you can so passionately love and hate as a sibling. But as much as you want to throw your controllers at them, it’s tough to not miss them at the moment. If distance is keeping you apart, or even if it’s not, here are some games to play to either remind you of the rascals or connect with them through gaming this National Siblings Day.
Overcooked
Overcooked and its sequel – Overcooked! 2 – will put your relationship with your siblings to the test. Overcooked might start out as a cute, relaxing and unique co-op game about cooking, but it soon escalates into a kitchen frenzy.
Overcooked doesn’t initially seem too complicated. You receive food orders and need to carry out tasks to complete these orders such as chopping lettuce or frying meat. But Overcooked’s orders become increasingly complex and its level design actively works against you. Counters will separate you, your teammate, ingredients and so on, making communication, planning and an efficient system crucial.
Even though things in the kitchen can get devilishly tense, the satisfaction from receiving the coveted three star ratings on tough levels is unbeatable. If you want a fun game to play with siblings today, you won’t find a game that tests your cooperation quite like Overcooked.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
After days of sweat, gruelling arguments and ecstatic triumph, me and my siblings had finally completed Halo 3’s campaign on legendary difficulty. The achievement popped as Master Chief gave his final sacrifice and I’ll never forget it.
Some of my fondest memories from my childhood came from playing the Halo series cooperatively with my siblings. Looking out for each other, planning strategies, swapping weapons and arguing about who gets the Warthog’s turret are all experiences burned into my memory. Halo’s campaign is perfect for co-op play with a gauntlet of enemies, open level design and one of the best vehicle sandboxes in gaming. If you’re missing your siblings today, jump onto some Halo. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to bring anybody else into an intergalactic war.
If you’re not in the mood to be nice to each other, Halo has some of the best competitive maps of all time – and The Master Chief Collection is the best way to play them. This way you can find a safe way to beat them up. Especially on one-on-one matches Halo can be a joy. Scrambling for the power weapons and sneaking up on each other can lead to the best cat-and-mouse moments in gaming and it’s just a joy.
Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons
Okay, now onto some single player content.
As the title implies, the game has you controlling brother Naia and Naiee each with a different side of the controller. One analog stick and trigger will control Naia and the others control Naiee. It’s a true test of a gamer’s hand eye coordination, especially in certain tougher puzzle-platforming sections, and the mechanic is put to really powerful use at the end of the game.
While Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is full of creative puzzles, tense platforming sequences and fantastical locations, it’s the story that elevates the experiences. Naia and Naiee traverse a twisted fairytale world in search of a cure for their dying father. But it’s their relationship that’s front and centre. You can pretty much interact with anything in the environment and seeing how each of them react differently to things and to each other is a joy. It’s a true celebration of brotherhood and a masterclass in wordless storytelling.
Tales from the Borderlands
From the heartfelt journey of two brothers, to the heartfelt and hilarious adventure between two sisters. While the story of Tales From the Borderlands is split between the perspectives of Rhys and Fiona, there is still a heavy and poignant emphasis on the relationship between Fiona and her sister, Sasha.
These two con artists begin as hustlers, carrying out smaller scale crimes to get by. But after meeting Rhys, they’re soon entangled into a much larger heist that has consequences for the entire Borderlands story. While Tales includes much of the same absurd humour from the mainline games, it also has a surprising amount of pathos thanks to the intimate and close relationship between the sisters.
Gone Home
Gone Home is an odd choice as our two sisters are separated throughout the game. However, this doesn’t hinder how effective this relationship is. Playing as Katie Greenbriar, you return home only to find an ominous note from your sister, Sam, and an empty house. Though you’ll never fully interact with Sam, she’s been recording you audio logs while you’ve been away, describing every aspect of her life in excruciatingly intimate detail. Sam covers everything from falling in love to playing Street Fighter at the 7/11.
It’s these personal anecdotes as well as the minuscule details found around the house that tells you everything you need to know about Katie, Sam and their relationship. For example, one of the many childhood items scattered around the house includes test papers from both of your childhoods. Katie’s includes a sensible, well-written answer. Sam’s includes a bunch of phallic imagery and sarcasm. Its environmental storytelling is extraordinary in this sense. The house is nostalgia ‘gamified’, and right now we can’t ask for anything better.
So, it’s National Sibling Day and there can be no better time than the present to play these games, perhaps with your sibling. But let us know what you’ll be doing this year; is the self-isolation period keeping you apart and it’s the gaming scene which manages to bring you back together? The comments are down below.
