Brigador: Up-Armored Edition

This is one of the best indie games EVER made. And it is one of the most underated as well. This gem can give one HOURS of gameplay and the campaign story is not that bad -- even though the narrative is conveyed through communiques and journal entries. (My least favorite storytelling trope!) It is very fun and challenging. Itt really deserves more love. I remember watching a YouTube video (Mandoregaming) about this game where the developers were apologizing for this game. Both the commentator and I were like, "NO! Do not apologize! This is a fantastic game!!!" It really is -- the gameplay, the music, the visuals, just top-notch! I whole-heartedly recommend this game.

Brigador deserves a better fate than this. Brigador is a game that should have joined the ranks other gaming masterpieces like Baldur's Gate, Diablo, WoW Classic, etc. Unfortunately, it committed two of most grievous development sins: Poor Controls and Terrible Onboarding. Examples? Very literal tank controls (there's a better control scheme but it isn't well labelled and isn't much better), and the game's extremely interesting and detailed story is told in a Soulslike fashion: through in-game item descriptions or is otherwise locked behind an in-game paywall. That's right, want to learn about a historical event? Gotta buy that Wiki article. Brigador would benefit tremendously from a campaign and interface overhaul. That's the bad, and if you can push past it there's so much gold waiting for you. So much. The game is Capitalistic to the extreme; pilots, weapons, mechs, etc are all purchasable. Everything is customizable, if you can afford it. Play styles vary wildly. Bigger, heavier mechs offer more armor, HP, and onboard weapons but they can be slow and clunky and extremely noisy. Oh yeah, Brigador has a robust stealth system with a novel approach: don't make noise. Weapons and mechs generate certain amounts of noise, including the weapon's impact. So if you're far enough away that the initial shot isn't louder than the impact, hostiles will investigate the impact site rather than you. Hint: Mechs that Hover don't have audible footsteps. Also everything is destructible. Flatten the whole map if you want, but make sure your enemies are standing next to that fuel tank first. Or just light up the pipeline that leads to it. This game is worth the effort to get into it, and the pilot biographies alone are worth the price.

This is not a game that deserves 5 stars. It is extremely repetitive and not in a good way. All missions have the same objectives (all of them). All the maps are very similar. None of them offer any difference in gameplay. The campaign mode consists of a list of missions with no connection between them, there is no story, no lore, nothing... You can't even customize your mech. Free mode (in which you can customize your mech) is exactly the same as campaign mode. To make matters worse the control support doesn't work in linux (I don't know if it works in windows). The graphics are good, although everything looks very small on the screen. It is a simple, repetitive game. It has some unlockables but they don't change the gameplay at all. If you like casual games without much depth, this is for you. If you want an action game with mechs... you better look elsewhere.

You have to have fun with violence against hordes of defenceless targets. It's fun because it's simple. It's interesting because it's complex.

First of all, I gave the game 1/5 because its average rating of 4.5/5 is definitely so over the top. It can never compare with real 4.5/5 classic games. Never. Whatever one may say for it: Just NEVER. Ok, that being said, I give it a 2.5/5. Because it feels like it is a nice template for a game which never has been finished. It is fun for the first 3 hours then its only repetition. And when those explosive buildings scattered around the map are much more of a threat than actual enemies, I would call that just bad game design. My advice: play if for 3h, have some fun and then uninstall and forget.