Brigador is a fantastic game.

Imagine for a bit, a Latin American Country decides it has had enough with Earth and decides to move to a distant planet. Of course, space companies run by philantropists like Beff Jezos or Melon Husk are also there, ready to engage in vile acts of terrorism to improve the country via destabilisation. You are a Brigador, a ruthless killer in a death machine hired by these companies to drive your Tesla™ Tank and your Amazon™ Mech and your Microsoft ® Hovertank all over the populated urban centres of this planet.
The Brigador can be one of a variety of characters of every gender and colour, all in service of the neoliberal dream of people of all colours being capable of committing atrocities that your average American Private Military contractor can pull off.

Set your Controls to Relative. It's rough at first, but once it becomes natural you'll start enjoying the fantastic art, music and sound direction. I would like to be emphatic when I praise these things. This game came out during the peak of the synthwave aesthetic back in 2016, and perfectly captures it.

The art you will enjoy will not last. Why? You need money. What makes money? Death and destruction of infrastructure. Everything that moves can be killed, everything that is standing can be torn down. It's actually quite amazing how the engine for this game works. I'd like to explain it to you, but I simply don't understand programming. All I can do is enjoy the pretty colours my big gun makes as it turns housing complexes into open air concrete gardens.

Playing it is intense, stimulating, exhilarating. intermittent moments of planning and bursts of movement and gunfire. Outmaneuver the guards, play dirty and make loads of money.

The very premise of this game is horrifying, the actions of the player characters are chilling and it's almost unbelievable what the companies are willing to do to establish a corporate presence (almost, please google Coca Cola Columbia Death Squads for more, among other examples). The only solace I'm willing to offer you is that this will likely never happen. There are no Latin American countries in space, and if we know anything about Elon Musks Rocket, it's that it won't be going to Mars, it will be going to the Middle East instead (https://www.businessinsider.com/musks-spacex-partners-us-military-to-deliver-weapons-by-rockets-2020-10)

Brigador: Up-Armored Edition Review

-----It’s strange when a game doesn’t click with you when you think it really should. That’s what I felt for a majority of my time playing Brigador: Up-Armored Edition. My initial interest for the game was sparked by a MandalorGaming review on Youtube, which gave the software extensive praise. Seeing as the game took obvious ques from the top-down shooter genre, mixed with Rare’s Blast Corps concept, I was really looking forward to this game. Especially with its emphasis on earning money through multiple objectives, I thought the wealth of content with my earned experience would really engage me. Yet throughout my playthrough of Brigador I never felt a decent spark. It’s odd. Especially since I caught glimpses of the aforementioned Blast Corps., but also Hotline Miami, Chopper Attack, Bangai-O, Robotron, and even Binding of Isaac. All games I love, so why not Brigador?
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-----One reason I can think of is how dryly the game is presented. I don’t mean the looks. In fact, the neon isometric pixel graphics bathed in saturated vaporwave aesthetics is something to truly admire. The same can be said for the destructible walls and buildings which crush nicely under the treads of Brigador’s well-designed tanks and mechs. No, what I mean is how outside of one moment of theatrics, Brigador doesn’t boast any real explicit narrative moments that would help motivate the player. Instead a lot of Brigador’s story is delivered through text, which isn’t bad on the surface, but when it’s delivered in such a dry and unexciting fashion for the whole game it gets old quickly. It’s not like the narrative is all that interesting either. I’d say Brigador’s story is actually kind of hard to grasp, despite it being kind of cliche within the science fiction genre.
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---Another reason I’d say I didn’t like Brigador as much as I should have is the pace at which it progresses. Brigador is mission based with marked objectives in each mission needed to complete in order to clear the level. Nothing new, and that’s the way it stays for the entirety of the gameplay. The advent of “kill 70 percent of the enemies” or “destroy these specific targets” gets old really quick. Brigador begs for some sort of shake-up in it’s gameplay that never comes. It also doesn’t help that the difficulty curve of the missions themselves is widely inconsistent, and all the levels are disappointingly short. I’d say there were a few missions in Brigador’s campaign that actually felt satisfying, and most of those came in it’s second third. As for the Freelance mode, forget it. These maps are so spacious and so lacking in enemies that I found this auxillary mode pretty boring. This is especially crushing given how unceremoniously the campaign itself just ends.
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-----Finally I’d say that the concept itself is kind of misguided. Brigador works on a firm system of slow tanks and mechs with different weapon types and play styles that are used to tackle swaths of fast enemies who work on an audio-based alarm system. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed to the point of frustration in this game. Trying to pick off enemy groups one by one doesn’t necessarily work either. Helf the time you can’t see the enemy vehicles shrouded in the game’s nighttime levels. Thus shooting at one enemy can result in the unintended consequence of alarming an entire fleet ready to chew through your shield in an instant. I found a good portion of Brigador’s gameplay to just be demoralizing.
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------Now, with all this being said, I don’t want to poo-poo all over the game outright. I do think there are some great portions of this game worth experiencing. For one, the weapon types and variety is quite well done. The same could be said of the player vehicles. There’s a lot to play around with and learn, and I really liked that. I would also say that when Brigador does work, it works really well. I loved moments when after I fought a big wave of enemies, I stocked up on ammo and shield orbs, and strategically moved onto the next group. And for what it’s worth, there has been a clear level of thought and effort put into the various mechanics and systems put into the game overall. So, overall I would say there are things to love about Brigador. It wouldn’t have had the critical reevaluation by fans over the years as it has without it’s great elements. For me however, I just can’t really get into the game. It’s too dry, too slow, too repetitive, and too hard to grasp for me to really get into it. Disappointing. - [05/10]

A big draw of roguelikes is the moment where you find a powerful combination of abilities that feels amazing to use. Achieving victory after multiple failed attempts is a great feeling, and one that keeps people trying and retrying for hundreds of hours. However, replaying the same content for only a chance at a payoff can get frustrating, and leave players wanting a more structured challenge instead. Brigador is a twin-stick mecha combat game that attempts to merge the strengths of roguelike satisfaction and linear challenge: you have an extensive suite of mech customization options, and an even more extensive set of randomized missions and difficulty modifiers to tune your experience. Harder missions reward you with more money for parts, and it forms a loop where you get more interesting mechs to take on more interesting missions. With a mission-based structure and permanent unlocks, the roguelike comparison seems questionably relevant, but that’s the sort of mindset I recommend when approaching this game. How much value you’ll get is dependent on how much you like pushing yourself in terms of difficulty, experimenting with mech setups to tackle specific challenges, and trying over until you get the big payoff. What makes the process so enjoyable is how perfect the game feel is, with the weight of your mechs, the power of your weapons, and the sounds of destruction all being incredibly satisfying. Even if this was just a linear twin-stick shooter with twenty missions, I would think the combat is cool enough to be worth the price, but you get a huge range of missions and mechs that could last you a hundred hours. If you’re even remotely interested in the concept, you’ll get your money’s worth.