Shifty
Member
Recently I've come back to Brigador, an isometric mech shooter focused on guerilla tactics and light stealth. I haven't seen as much love as I'd expect given its quality, so here's a big ol' RTTP thread to celebrate its finer points.
Brigador
RTTP
Set on the fictional planetary colony of Novo Solo in the totalitarian city state of Solo Nobre, the game begins with the death of dictator Great Leader.
With the city's governmental structure in chaos, the mysterious off-world Solo Nobre Concern shell corporation begins issuing high-value political espionage contracts to mech pilots across the city.
Those that accept betray their world and become Brigadors, tasked with assassination, demolition, and the wreaking of generalized havoc across the city as tools of the shadowy powers that vie for control of the colony.
And those civilians in yellow raincoats? Das ist eine statistik.
Structure
The game's main mode is a lengthy mission-based campaign with multiple character / vehicle choices to tackle each stage with.
Alongside that is a roguelite Freelance mode that allows you to pick your pilot, vehicle, weapons, utility item and area route.
Unlocks (or 'Acquisitions') for freelance mode are purchased with cash earned across both modes, which gives the game a long tail with the amount of content on offer.
Gameplay
The game features 3D gameplay from an isometric perspective, taking place in fully destructible urban environments and encouraging tactical combat reminiscent of MechWarrior.
As each mission will be a one-against-many situation, stealth and guerilla tactics are the first order of business.
The enemy AI is smart enough to react to the sound of your gunfire, but dumb enough that you can use that as a tactical advantage to lure them into chokepoints or flanking maneuvers.
Combined with various explosive structures in the environment, this results in an emergent stealth system that's almost reminiscent of the immersive sim genre.
The player can choose to pilot a variety of mechs, tanks and 'agravs' - anti-gravity vehicles.
Tanks and mechs operate on tank controls (with optional directional control for accessibility's sake) whereas agravs can strafe in any direction.
There are a variety of weight classes available for each vehicle type, ranging from diminutive Mongoose power suits all the way up to the tower block-sized Rat King ultramech.
Each vehicle has a primary and secondary weapon, along with a built-in vehicle utility that recharges on a cooldown.
This gives the game a huge amount of build variety, and opens up many different playstyles that include full-stealth assassination, glass cannon hit-and-run, and giant-walking-fortress-of-missiles among many others.
As a counterpoint to stealth, the game also rewards aggressive play with shield recharge drops from defeated enemies.
You can play rushdown, sniper, skirmisher, brawler, all sorts of different ways. It's great, and varied enough that you could spend months playing a different randomized loadout every day and not get the same thing twice.
Story
The story is mostly told in the form of Dark Souls-style lore entries tied to pilots, vehicles, weapons, locations and intel items.
Much of it is focused around world-building, letting the character arcs of the individual brigadors unfold through gameplay.
In addition, the deluxe edition includes an audiobook narrated by the gruff northern guy from the trailer.
It's enjoyable fare if mechs and military fiction are your bag, and some of the characters from it make an appearance as unlockable pilots in Freelance mode.
Graphics
The graphics are presented in a 2D engine, while offering fully 3D gameplay from an isometric perspective.
The game sports a clever rendering pipeline that uses sprites for all game objects, but supports proper dynamic lighting thanks to the pre-rendered assets' inclusion of normal maps.
It even has fancy screen-space directional and point light shadowing, which is a rarity for games of this type.
All in all it's very stylish, and looks like a slick modern take on the pre-rendered PC games of old.
Soundtrack
The game's original soundtrack is a solid synthwave offering composed by Makeup and Vanity Set:
It fits well with the atmosphere, and is authentic enough to have earned the following box quote:
To Conclude
This game is an overlooked gem, extremely polished, and old enough to be decently cheap on Steam and GOG.
It's well worth your time if you enjoy action, stealth, vehicle combat, isometric games, or any of the above.
Further Reading
The developers wrote up a post-mortem of the game's development (with pictures!) that can be found on Imgur if you want to know more about how it came to be:
Happy cake day, 5 years of gamedev will kill you - Imgur
Brigador
RTTP
Set on the fictional planetary colony of Novo Solo in the totalitarian city state of Solo Nobre, the game begins with the death of dictator Great Leader.
With the city's governmental structure in chaos, the mysterious off-world Solo Nobre Concern shell corporation begins issuing high-value political espionage contracts to mech pilots across the city.
Those that accept betray their world and become Brigadors, tasked with assassination, demolition, and the wreaking of generalized havoc across the city as tools of the shadowy powers that vie for control of the colony.
And those civilians in yellow raincoats? Das ist eine statistik.
Structure
The game's main mode is a lengthy mission-based campaign with multiple character / vehicle choices to tackle each stage with.
Alongside that is a roguelite Freelance mode that allows you to pick your pilot, vehicle, weapons, utility item and area route.
Unlocks (or 'Acquisitions') for freelance mode are purchased with cash earned across both modes, which gives the game a long tail with the amount of content on offer.
Gameplay
The game features 3D gameplay from an isometric perspective, taking place in fully destructible urban environments and encouraging tactical combat reminiscent of MechWarrior.
As each mission will be a one-against-many situation, stealth and guerilla tactics are the first order of business.
The enemy AI is smart enough to react to the sound of your gunfire, but dumb enough that you can use that as a tactical advantage to lure them into chokepoints or flanking maneuvers.
Combined with various explosive structures in the environment, this results in an emergent stealth system that's almost reminiscent of the immersive sim genre.
The player can choose to pilot a variety of mechs, tanks and 'agravs' - anti-gravity vehicles.
Tanks and mechs operate on tank controls (with optional directional control for accessibility's sake) whereas agravs can strafe in any direction.
There are a variety of weight classes available for each vehicle type, ranging from diminutive Mongoose power suits all the way up to the tower block-sized Rat King ultramech.
Each vehicle has a primary and secondary weapon, along with a built-in vehicle utility that recharges on a cooldown.
This gives the game a huge amount of build variety, and opens up many different playstyles that include full-stealth assassination, glass cannon hit-and-run, and giant-walking-fortress-of-missiles among many others.
As a counterpoint to stealth, the game also rewards aggressive play with shield recharge drops from defeated enemies.
You can play rushdown, sniper, skirmisher, brawler, all sorts of different ways. It's great, and varied enough that you could spend months playing a different randomized loadout every day and not get the same thing twice.
Story
The story is mostly told in the form of Dark Souls-style lore entries tied to pilots, vehicles, weapons, locations and intel items.
Much of it is focused around world-building, letting the character arcs of the individual brigadors unfold through gameplay.
In addition, the deluxe edition includes an audiobook narrated by the gruff northern guy from the trailer.
It's enjoyable fare if mechs and military fiction are your bag, and some of the characters from it make an appearance as unlockable pilots in Freelance mode.
Graphics
The graphics are presented in a 2D engine, while offering fully 3D gameplay from an isometric perspective.
The game sports a clever rendering pipeline that uses sprites for all game objects, but supports proper dynamic lighting thanks to the pre-rendered assets' inclusion of normal maps.
It even has fancy screen-space directional and point light shadowing, which is a rarity for games of this type.
All in all it's very stylish, and looks like a slick modern take on the pre-rendered PC games of old.
Soundtrack
The game's original soundtrack is a solid synthwave offering composed by Makeup and Vanity Set:
It fits well with the atmosphere, and is authentic enough to have earned the following box quote:
Jeff Gerstmann of Giantbomb said:
To Conclude
This game is an overlooked gem, extremely polished, and old enough to be decently cheap on Steam and GOG.
It's well worth your time if you enjoy action, stealth, vehicle combat, isometric games, or any of the above.
The developers wrote up a post-mortem of the game's development (with pictures!) that can be found on Imgur if you want to know more about how it came to be:
Happy cake day, 5 years of gamedev will kill you - Imgur
( H Heliocentric )Jeff Gerstmann of Giantbomb also said:
Last edited:
