[Introduction]
How does that one song go?
It's beginning to look a lot like war crimes, everywhere you go!
Jokes aside, welcome to Brigador, an isometric real-time tactical game where you pilot everything from mobile bunker complexes and artillery batteries on legs to agile scout mechs and upgunned tuk-tuks.
Risk and reward are the name of the game. Suit up, plug in that cranial jack and let's show those plebs from the Nuremberg Trials how it's done. Geneva Conventions? More like Geneva Suggestions.
[First Impressions]
GREAT LEADER IS DEAD.
SOLO NOBRE MUST FALL.
Along with the subsequent contract introduction, these are the first (and only) words you will hear while playing the game.
Beyond that, Brigador is presented like a twin-stick shooter and even controls like one by default, but it really isn't, but more on that later. For now, suffice it to say that Brigador starts as it means to go on: with gratuitous carnage and precisely zero chill.
[Development]
Brigador was made by Stellar Jockeys, meaning that this has been a project of about as many people as you can count on one hand, provided you aren't missing any fingers. Hugh Monahan, Jack Monahan, Dale Kim and Harry Hsiao made the original Brigador, with development beginning sometime in 2011, early access in October 2015 and finally a release in June 2016. The whole thing was entirely self-funded and built from the ground up using a custom engine. Impressive stuff, considering the relatively small team.
Now, Brigador looks like a twin-stick shooter. A lot of people actually saw gameplay trailers and assumed this was the case. People still make that assumption today, and that's largely because everything abouts its presentation screams twin-stick shooter.
However, Brigador is, in fact, not a twin-stick shooter, at least it wasn't by default when the game was initially released. It functioned off of tank controls, meaning that your movement is not relative to the screen (i.e. W means up, S means down), but relative to the direction your vehicle is facing (i.e. W means forward, S means backwards). It was always possible to switch to twin-stick shooter controls, called "screen absolute" in the game's options menu, rather than using the default tank controls, called "relative."
Unfortunately, this option didn't occur to a lot of people, reviewers included, or perhaps it just didn't matter. Whatever the case, this is a large part of why the game originally received mixed reviews. More importantly, this was also an important element in the later Up-Armored Edition re-release of Brigador in June 2017. By this point, Dale Kim and Harry Hsiao had left the team on amicable terms, being replaced by Karl Parakenings. As it happens, Stellar Jockeys appear to have taken the arguably undue criticism to heart, and the Up-Armored Edition, rather unfortunately, uses screen absolute controls by default. I'll explain why in a moment.
[Game Mechanics]
So, remember a moment ago when I said it was unfortunate that the Up-Armored Edition uses screen absolute controls by default? Let me tell you why it's unfortunate:
THE GAME USES A DIRECTIONAL DAMAGE SYSTEM.
Say some hotshot enemy mech pilot thinks he's gonna blow you to kingdom come. He comes at you guns blazing, but your front armor is thick, so you're fine. You circle around him, fire your main weapon in his back where his armor is weak. Facing matters in Brigador, and while screen absolute controls are easier to get used to, you're actually gimping yourself in the long run. Sure, you can move in one direction and fire in another; your guns and your legs operate independently, but doing so will train you to disregard the directional damage system. Don't be a laxative, play screen relative.
I dunno, I have to work on that one, but you get the idea: relative is the way to go if you wanna live. It's a real-time tactics game. Be tactical. Argubaly the only real exception to this are antigravity vehicles ("agravs"), which tend to be so fast that tanks controls make them too hard to control and so fragile that directional damage almost doesn't matter.
That tirade aside, Brigador is a real treat for your inner Radovan Karadžić. You get an exciting variety of weapons, ranging from chemical projectors that can corrode literally anything and gigantic 88mm shotguns to gatling mortars and what basically amounts to metal tubes stuffed to the brim with gunpowder. You get to mount these on antigravity vehicles, tanks and mechs, which include everything from tiny suits of power armor that fold like paper to mobile fortresses that are borderline invincible. In addition, you get a piece of activated special equipment in the form of smoke projectors (which provide smoke cover), EMP launchers (which shut down enemy vehicles in a large radius... and also the whole city block), active camouflage (which render you invisible) or the audio-kinetic pulse (which will flatten anything in a cone, be it cover or enemies. Or civilians).
Now, rule of cool aside, you might ask yourself why you would ever bother with a chintsy little suit of power armor. You have access to murder machines with armor so thick they could probably survive being Hiroshimafied, wouldn't you just be gimping yourself?
Well,
Yes. You would be gimping yourself. But picking a Mongoose over a Praetor also gives you a 3x multiplier to mission payout. Risk and reward. Big challenge, big money, and this extends to the pilot selection as well.
The pilots don't really matter as much as one might imagine, with some exceptions. The only thing your choice of pilot affects is usually the starting difficulty, the max difficulty, the difficulty increase per level, the victory bonus and the min/max payout multiplier. If it sounds as though the pilots are essentially a glorified difficulty selection, then you'd be right. The only other thing the pilots add to the game is flavor text, but everything in Brigador has flavor text, and that's all fluff. Welcome fluff, but fluff nonetheless, and this is one of my few gripes with the game:
I wish the pilots mattered more.
You know, give them some attributes. Say some of them can't turn as fast because maneuverability is for cowards, or they get a bonus to defense and a speed penalty because they're cautious, or maybe they have to complete missions within a set time limit because there's a bomb attached to their mom, something like that. Add some variety, some more depth to the pilot selection other than picking how hard you want things to be. Keep things interesting.
Something else, which is less a gripe and, I suppose, more a word of caution: after completing the campaign, you may have to make up your own challenges to stay engaged with the game. It kind of turns into a sandbox at this point. You get all the different vehicles and guns and such and you mix and match to your heart's content. This is not at all a bad thing in my mind, I've had a great deal of fun with it, but I know some of you may prefer something more solid and perhaps less sandboxy. Not everyone is interested in making their own fun.
Incidentally, I have yet to complete the Closed Casket Special piloting a tuk-tuk, but I've gotten pretty darn good at doing wheelies around heavy mechs.
Finally, the game is technically divided into two: a campaign and the freelance missions. The campaign is essentially a very long and very optional tutorial in which you complete increasingly different missions with a limited pool of 4 pilots who all have preset vehicles with preset loadouts. It helps you learn how everything works and gives you ample opportunity to figure out some preferences by being forced to select from that limited pool of loadouts. The freelance missions meanwhile function as a sort of sandbox where you pick a pilot, a vehicle, two weapons, special equipment and an OPERATION, which essentially allows you to pick from any and all districts, either in a set order or a random scramble.
You could also go for the Closed Casket Special. Enjoy going through all 39 districts with no opportunity to cut your losses and go home with your earnings so far until you're done.
Double finally, you might also notice that everything costs money to unlock, including the details of your Brigador contract. Some of the price tags (for example, $35,000,000) might make you think the game is grindy as all hell.
It really isn't. Don't worry about that. You'll be able to get money to unlock vehicles and gear pretty easily, especially if you do the campaign, and the rest is just lore. Literally everything gives you at least some cash, whether it's taking out enemy captains, destroying orbital guns, plowing through buildings, perforating traffic jams or stepping on non-combatants. Just make sure the non-combatants aren't suicide bombers before you do.
[Graphics]
This might sound like a crazy tangent, but have you ever played the old Westwood RTS games? Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, those wonderful old relics? Remember how they put a frankly unnecessary amount of effort into various objects, buildings and props that really played no real role in the game other than improving the quality of the scenery? I remember, and although I don't work for Pepperidge Farms, I get a similar feeling when I look at Brigador. The devs really put in some effort, because the environments are gorgeous and every stage of destruction looks great. This is particularly crazy, because aside from the outer district walls of an area and the ground itself, everything is destructible. Even the rubble looks pretty. Hell, it doesn't matter if you destroy nothing at all or if you level the entire area, or somewhere inbetween - the environment looks and feels great.
The vehicles themselves are actually 3D models that have been rendered in 2D from a whole bunch of different angles, providing an effective illusion of a three-dimensional world. This is not just true for the player - this quality of modeling and animation is present in everything the enemy throws at you as well, including the few not accessible to players.
On top of this, the art direction is solid. Solo Nobre is a weird mix between massive graveyards, high-end suburban residential neighborhoods, shanty town slums, industrial districts, military bases, metropolitan areas and forested wilderness. There's enough variety that you never quite feel you're in the same area, but enough consistency that it never quite feels out of place.
[Story]
You would be forgiven for thinking that a game like Brigador doesn't really have any story to speak of.
It looks and feels like one of those games whose entire purpose is just catharsis and gratuitous enjoyment of the game, like DOOM or Painkiller.
Indeed, you could probably ignore all the flavor text and just level half the hemisphere with cluster munitions and railguns. I just think you'd be missing out.
See, Brigador has a lot of flavor text and a lot of lore and intel. There's nothing available to you that doesn't have flavor text attached. Pilots, vehicles, equipment, the whole shebang, there's a log entry for it all, and everything is written by an in-universe character, which gives it all a more natural feel and a more personal flair. It's never the developer writing a lore entry on their game. It's someone in the Brigador universe writing down some notes on the Mongoose or the Gutterball or the Cyclolucidites. It's a surprisingly expansive universe with a lot of details added and a lot of stuff fleshed out just enough that I want more. Like the game's visuals, the setting itself feels very distinct.
The Up-Armored Edition even comes with an audiobook, and I wanna make something clear:
Up until this point, I really did not like the notion of audiobooks. I've always preferred having the book in my hands, not just listening to it, but holy shit. The Brigador audiobook is really good.
I suppose this would also be a good time to come back to what I said in the beginning of the review: that the words introducing you to your contract are the only words you will hear.
This is one of my other few gripes with the game. I kinda wish we could have more interaction with the enemy. You know, some kind of Hideo Kojima level chatter. Something like that, although in its absence, the soundtrack fills the space more than adequately.
[Spoilers]
There's not much to spoil, but I will say this much about the audiobook:
Kroenig deserved better.
[Pros]
- Satisfying gameplay
- Great soundtrack
- Surprisingly expansive universe
- Comes with a good audiobook
- Solid variety to vehicles and equipment
- Not grindy
- Beautifully rendered environments and vehicles
[Cons]
- Pilots are basically a glorified difficulty selection
- Some vehicles are not accessible to players
- Limited to 2 weapons per vehicle
- You may have to make up your own challenges post-campaign to stay engaged
[Conclusion]
Brigador is a great game.
It is what it is and doesn't try to be anything else.
It's war crime o' clock and you're all invited to a party in Solo Nobre.
Moral compass optional.
[Score]
10/10
/DUX
No comments:
Post a Comment