The Expendabros | a Review
originally published on 13/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the bro who is not expendable, G.E.M.Simov, a being so valuable and irreplaceable that I’ve been pronounced “special” and “unique”, as a result of which I will tell you about “The Expendabros”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
The Expendabros is a 2D sidescroller that takes a lot of inspiration from games like Contra, but also 90s action movies. The Player is granted control of a Player Character who is oddly reminiscent of Sylvester Stallone, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Mr. T, and is let loose upon a level.
The Player’s Character will have a special attack, as well as an ordinary attack - with the ordinary attack being performed by pressing the Z button and the special attack being performed by pressing the X button. The special attack requires ammo, which can be acquired from special boxes during the Player’s progress through a level.
The Player’s task is simple: go from point A to point B, while not dying. The Character the Player has can walk either left or right, by using the Left and Right arrow keys, can jump by pressing the Up arrow key, and can go up or down ladders with the Up and Down arrow keys. In addition to that, the PC can climb up walls by holding down the arrow coinciding with the direction in which the wall is, while also pressing the up arrow repeatedly.
One last thing that the Player can do is interact with intractable objects by pressing C, which is also used as a melee attack.
With that said, the Expendabros is about running through a level that is entirely destructible - as attacking with the Z key fires a stream of bullets, normally, which destroy anything in their path, including terrain - killing every terrorist and putting up flags of the USA at every conceivable flag post.
The way the game works is quite simple - aside from having to jump over obstacles or zipline here and there, the main challenge is found in avoiding death, as any source of damage will kill the PC, costing the Player 1 life. Running out of lives means that the level needs to be started over from scratch.
The interesting part here is that every life is a different Character, with a different set of normal and special attacks. Some throw knives, others shoot machine guns, third fire grenades with grenade launchers - there’s a lot of variety and there are a lot of quirky things.
Obtaining extra lives happens by first breaking a cage, whenever one is found in a level, and then touching the bound and gagged fellow (prisoner) in it, which will either unlock a new Character, give the Player an extra Life and make that new Character the Player’s current Character, or will just change the Player’s current Character to one of those who are already unlocked and will give the Player an extra life.
The more times the Player gets an extra life by touching prisoners, the more new Characters will be unlocked.
And so, the Expendabros presents a number of levels through which the Player walks, killing everything in sight (like a Hollywood action star) and then hops on a helicopter, leaving the level a mess of explosions (badass). The levels are populated with all kinds of enemies, the variety growing the further in the game one goes.
At the start, there are only ordinary terrorists, who die in one hit. Then, there show up kamikaze terrorists, who explode after they die OR they blow themselves up after a certain amount of time passes (following them spotting the PC). Then there are rocket-launcher terrorists, who fire homing explosive missiles, and then heavy terrorists, who take a lot of punishment before dying. There are also terrorist dogs (complete with the balaclavas), who can eat dead terrorists to become bigger and tougher, and terrorist trucks, and a lot of terrorist themed things.
There are also boss fights, naturally, but the most interesting thing, aside from the Hollywood action stars, would have to be the Stealth. This game features stealth - in the sense that enemies do not know that the PC is on the map, and they will not find out until they see the PC (which requires that there is no terrain between themselves and the PC) or until the PC does not cause a mighty ruckus - explosions or gunfire.
Thus, going in slowly and killing stuff with the melee attack allows the Player to be a sneaky commando, in a manner almost similar to “Mark of the Ninja”, though a lot more rudimentary. Still, it is enjoyable to do.
Alas, this game is a one-and-one deal, and unlike the arcade games that it is clearly emulating, it is nowhere near as challenging as them to warrant lengthy amounts of playtime. It’s just a short little trip through weird terrorist hideouts alongside Arnie, Jason Statham and Vin Diesel. There are cool things to see - Rube Goldberg-esque sequences spurred on by one dead Kamikaze, leading into massive saws flying everywhere, killing everything in sight… But since the game is not challenging, there’s no point in doing it again.
One saving grace, potentially, is the fact that the game can be played by up to 4 Players at once, who all take on the roles of different bros and go on to wreak havoc.
With all that said, it must be considered that the Expendabros is a free little game that acts as a demo for another, longer game - Broforce - yet the Expendabros is for all intents and purposes separate from it. In addition to that, it is an advertisement/movie tie-in game for “the Expenadbles 3”.
As odd as that is, for a pseudo-demo it does its job very well, even if it does also showcase some of the issues of the game - too many enemies can lead to the Player dying regardless of what they do, the destroyable environments can cause the Player to unintentionally lock themselves from beating the level, as a new pit that’s too wide has opened up, thus making it impossible to proceed, and a resounding lack of replayability.
Still, it’s decent. 2/3
Presentation
The Expendabros is a pixel-based 2D sidescroller that is so bombastically rich in its theme that I find it difficult to not give it the highest grade possible just for the commitment to the bit. Not only does the pixel-art look good as it is already, but then they went and added every imaginable action movie hero from the 2000s and the 1990s, as was already stated in the Gameplay section.
The Characters are incredibly plentiful and colorful, made both caricaturesquely one-note but also somewhat cute, thanks to the way their sprites appear in the game. The amount of personality that the game itself has is obtuse - as previously mentioned, the terrorist dogs have balaclavas (that’s how you know they are terrorist dogs).
Then there’s sounds and music - the game features the exact type of music associated with action movies. Intense, epic tunes and then rock, with someone going absolutely insane on the guitar. However, it is not something truly spectacular. The sound effects are also not too impressive, even though they are very well placed and do their job spectacularly well - acting as not only sound effects, but also as cues indicating things that the Player needs to know (especially in regards to the stealth aspect of the game).
There is some voice-acting, which comes in the form of a narrator, whose voice is the manliest thing imaginable, who screams at the top of his lungs and growls like a wild animal. What he says is very lacking - a one liner whenever the Player loses their last Life or a “Let’s go” when the level begins, but still he is very intense and generates mountainous levels of hype and energy for the Playing of the game, which goes along with the theme and the feeling of the Expendabros perfectly.
Lastly, the game suffers from not having a Tutorial - as it does not tell the Player anything - but, fortunately, the controls are very simple and they can also be found in the settings.
Overall, though? The Expendabros presents itself immaculately. 3/3
Story
There is, loosely, some kind of story in the Expendabros. The bros, who are members of the Broforce, which is apparently some kind of USA special unit, have all been captured, save for some Stallone kind of bro, who also gets captured. However, by flexing his muscles, he breaks out and saves the other bros, after which they save the day… Well, actually no, there’s a big ol’ cliffhanger.
It’s very simple, it’s conveyed in such a bare-bones manner that there’s barely anything to figure out, and, as a result of that, it’s only there as a little addition, even if nothing would happen to the game if it was missing… But it is not bad. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Simple answer, with no need for elaboration - no, it does not. 0/1
Conclusion
6/10. The Expendabros is a fun little game/demo that, if you enjoy, you should go and get Broforce. It’s something I would recommend to fans of old-school arcade games like Cobra or Metal Slug, but it’s more novel than it’s fun.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes, where it will gather dust until the end of times. Ah well, at least it was badass, bro!