Brigador (PC) Review

Brigador places the player in the role of a giant mech, who, per orders from their commander, must lay waste to entire cities and landscapes. There's not a tremendous amount of story, but, really, there doesn't need to be. Brigador isn't a game about character development or huge plot twists. It's about masterfully laying waste while avoiding death, and completing each mission.

One of the most powerful weapons the game has is actually its isometric point of view. While this is about creating chaos to some degree, it feels like a beautifully chaotic board game, like playing Chinese checkers with a war machine against a legion of soon to be corpses. Mixed with the powerful, thumping soundtrack, like a raver's techno take on the X-Files theme, it's easy to get whisked away into each mission.

Missions also benefit from never being too long. Even in the story mode, none of the missions stay beyond their welcome, although some, especially after gaining a feel for the game, seem too difficult and unfair. However, the majority are fun and challenging romps to the goal.

Brigador is a lot of simple fun, and playing it can easily be the beginning of an addiction punctuated by the "one more time" bug. It isn't without its hang ups, though. The character has a cloaking device for their mech, which simply doesn't last long enough. In early levels, this leads to deaths that don't teach the player how to survive, so much as they reiterate the most prominent issue, which is some of the clunkiest controls to grace third-person games in years.

Essentially, the mech's legs can be turned, and it can be driven backwards and forwards. The catch is that those very legs actually dictate the direction you move, meaning that moving forward quickly means setting up your legs in advance. This may sound strategic, but it's harder to appreciate the game when the most consistent enemy is the protagonist's very limbs.

Still, getting used to the Resident Evil-like controls is simply worth getting past because Brigador itself is worth it. The pixel art is absolutely beautiful, so if there's no other reason for beating each level, consider it an objective just to see how the next level looks. The game seems to take a bit to load from time to time, but once it does, it's a stern reminder of why pixel art can be truly beautiful.