Developer: Stellar Jockeys, Gausswerks
Publisher: Stellar Jockeys
Platforms: PC, Mac
Tested on: PC
Brigador – Review
Military groups have taken control of your precious capital city. They’ve locked the place down and isolated all of the inhabitants. There’s no outside help, but that’s why you’re brought in: a Brigador. Blast your way through the capital city and drive out all of the invaders in order to get your precious possession back in your hands and free the inhabitants from the oppression. Brigador is Stellar Jockey’s and Gausswerks’ latest love child and it features intense action in an isometric shooter style.
Story
A paramilitary group called Novo Exército do Povo (NEP) has seized power of Solo Nombre, which is the capital city of the Novo Solo colony. Negotiations with the Great Leader of the NEP have failed. Solo Nobre is closed down completely and isolated from the outside world, but it’s fortified like a bunker and there can’t be any outside assistance because of this. You’re a Brigador and have been recruited to go into Solo Nombre and restore the city to prosperity.
The story in Brigador is quite well overall. There is a lot of information to learn from the mission briefings as well as lore that can be acquired which gives more information about the Brigadors, the factions, technical information about the city, locations and more information about Solo Nombre. Intel can also be bought that gives extra information about all of the mechs, tanks and other units. All of this information isn’t available from the start, so it’s something to work towards if you want to learn more about the game.
Graphics
Brigador’s graphics are quite nice to look at. They aren’t the most amazing next-gen graphics, but it’s inspired by the lush graphic style of 90’s games and it looks really unique and fun. While the graphics look old-school, everything still has surprisingly much detail to it. The game and environments themselves look pretty dark and grim, which is a very good setting for a city that’s in lock down and isolation. All of the graphical effects from explosions and weapons also look fairly good when compared to the rest of the game.
Sound
The music and sound effects in Brigador are pretty good overall. There are a lot of different soundtracks and according to the developers there’s over 2 hours of music in the game. Sound effects in Brigador are also pretty good and very satisfying when exploding things with giant rockets, lasers or even a gauss cannon. Everything fits together quite well and nothing is really disturbing or stands out a lot from the rest.
Gameplay
In essence, Brigador is an isometric mech action game where you simply shoot whatever that moves and annihilate everything. It’s a singleplayer game and features a reasonable sized campaign of 21 missions and free play to go with it. The game is also fully played with mouse and keyboard with no controller support, which is a little bit disappointing but not a huge problem in any way.
As said, Brigador features a campaign mode with 21 missions. In these missions, you simply try to make the life of the NEP a living hell by laying siege on their captains, ammo depots, substations and comm towers. Every mission has a main objective that has to be completed like “kill 5 captains”, but there are also some secondary objectives that can be completed in order to get extra money. After the main objective has been finished, you can simply exit the level if you want or keep wrecking everything that stands in your way in order to get more money by destroying buildings and enemies.
Every mission also has a couple of loadouts that can be chosen, except for the first couple of levels. These loadouts are simply different mechs, tanks and agravs which have different weapons, speed, acceleration, turn speed, shield, health and more. This is quite a nice feature because you’re not locked into a single mech for a mission, so you can choose which one fits your play style. It also offers some replayability because you can try to complete every level with each loadout provided in order to test your skill.
Another game mode is Freelance, which is a pretty fun game mode which provides random missions for you to play. You can choose and unlock different pilots, vehicles, primary weapon, secondary weapon, special and which operation you want to play. There is a huge amount of combinations that can be mixed and matched in order to always have a different Freelance mission, which is a very good thing for replayability. You also have to keep playing in order to get more gold, which allows you to unlock more stuff which in turn allows you to play more and get more gold. It’s pretty much a loop until you unlock everything, however it’s not a bad thing to do this as the environment and enemies change around a lot, providing a different setting every time.
Conclusion
Brigador is a pretty fun game from start to end. It has old school graphics with a modern approach, a great sound track, a lot of variety and replayability. There are loads of different pilots, weapons and tanks/mechs that can be unlocked for Freelance mode which provides a lot of content to go through. The campaign mode is also very entertaining and will challenge you in both skill and patience.
Brigador - Review,
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