Expendabros Review

All too often games based on films, or other properties, in a word; suck. Expendabros is one of the rare exceptions.

PROS: Blows the last Expendables tie-in out of the water. FREE.

CONS: This is really less freeware, and more a glorified demo.

UNKNOWN: If this game has any actual spoilers. If it does. Expendables 3 will be weird.

Developed by the same team that is making BroForce,  Expendabros is loosely based on The Expendables 3. As such, the game works as not only a movie tie-in, but as a demo for BroForce as well. The game runs on the same engine, and uses many of the same assets that are in its predecessor.

Expendabros is up to four players on a single machine. It plays essentially the same as BroForce. Players will have to get from one end of the stage to the next. The whole affair is reminiscent of games like Konami’s Contra, or SNK’s Ikari Warriors. You will be attacked from every direction from grunts, mechs, gunners, and more. The game also throws in some really fun, and over the top bosses for you to conquer. Many of them are very challenging, and difficult to defeat. Particularly the end boss who practically turns the game into a bullet hell shoot ’em up.

Where  Expendabros differs from other 2D side scrolling shooters is its environments. Pretty much, every sprite the game displays is destructible. This means you can shoot your way through the terrain, almost like Dig Dug. Doing this can be both beneficial, and detrimental. It’s good because sometimes it means you can skip through a difficult section or get the jump on a deathtrap device. It’s bad because it also sometimes leads to dead ends or bottomless pits.

During missions, you will have to free prisoners from cages. When you do this you’ll slowly unlock members of the cast of Expendables 3. Unlocking the characters adds lives. But each character has their own abilities. Terry Crews gets a giant chain gun that is handy against bigger enemies. Dolph Lundgren gets a lot of cool explosives. Sylvester Stallone uses his dual pistols, while Jason Statham throws his trademark knives.

Unlocking the team members helps you last longer because when you die, another member is put under your control at random. It goes like this until you either clear the level or lose every team member.  There are also NPC characters throughout the game. You can interact with many of them, giving them weapons. Upon doing so these characters work a lot like the option orbs in Konami’s Gradius.

They will go about the level shooting grunts on your behalf. But they can, and usually will die from explosions, bullets, and things meant to kill you. You will also find flagpoles around the area. These act as checkpoints. Getting these raised means your next character will spawn next to one upon your death. Some of these are pretty difficult to get to. Especially in the later stages where the challenge begins to ramp up.

Visually, the game isn’t going to blow you away. It has a decent look to it going for a nice spin on the look of 8-bit, and 16-bit consoles. Between levels there are some pretty cool cinema screens that tell the story. Some of these are interactive QTEs.  Again, it goes a long way to try to bring back feelings of Contra, and Ikari Warriors. Games that actually took inspiration from theatrical, and direct to video action films.

The audio is actually quite nice. There’s an announcer in the vein of old Midway shooters like Smash TV. Guns, and explosions sound really cool while also being a throwback to the halcyon days of arcade cabinets. The Expendabros isn’t a very long game. You can clear it in four hours or less. But the game is a lot of fun for that short ride. By the end you’ll find the freeware title did its job, making you want BroForce. Or, like me, you’ll want BroForce as soon as it’s completed. BroForce is still in Early Access, and you may be wary of paying money for an incomplete game. To be fair, the developers at Free Lives have continually supported the title. But seeing how it isn’t done, you might want to choose to wait as I have.

As it stands, Expendabros is a really great introduction to BroForce, and one of the best freeware games you can get right now. The fact that it is this well put together, and a movie licensed game is a rare miracle. It isn’t often we see a good  game based on a movie, and rarer to see a free good game based on a movie.

Final Score: 8 out of 10