Brigador: Up-Armored Edition

8.5/10 So far! WHY? --> Brigador is GREAT, but has MAJOR flaws! But if you understand them, it's great! -- The campaign is a very slow tutorial for 2 hours, then gets fun. *I've apparently only played 4.6 hours, but it feels like I've played 10… in a bad way, as the first 2 hours felt looong. -- The Lore is VERY NECESSARY to enjoy the mission outlines, and setting as it provides very necessary context for hidden meanings. Most text is very cumbersome, boring, and dry as heck without it. -- Lore is hidden in Home-->Acquisitions-->Lore, and is not automatically unlocked in-line with the campaign. ++ The Lore is great if you buy it, in-game money is easy to earn, buy it. -- The "contract" Lore is too dry, technical in a bad way, hard to read, and mostly soulless. Skip unlocking it entirely. It should not be at the top of the lore section. - The humor / atmosphere is often too dry in mission briefings 80% meh, 20% awesome -- Menu navigation feels cumbersome for a while. ++ The weapons have a lot of variety. + Combing different weapons plays very differently. ++ The selectable vehicle types move very differently, thus play very differently. ++ The difficulty is dynamic. + If you are "screwed" on low health, you simply play more strategically, the low-health tension is great. ++ Enemy variety --/++ The controls are weird. The driving controls can be EASILY toggled between "Absolute" and "Relative" in the "Game settings" menu. BUUUT you first have to find them and know where they are… They should have put it at the top of this menu. - 4k resolution is not natively supported. It requires a very simple tweak. This should be mentioned in the "Display settings" menu. - Controllers kind of suck… This game is meant for keyboard and mouse. A controller is usable, but not with tank controls on an analogue stick, it feels very bad. "Absolute" driving mode makes a controller usable, but makes driving strange. Forwards and backwards should possibly be controller via trigger, or button, or combo, or tap vs tap-vs-hold mechanism. - Aiming at enemies that are flying, or buildings that are above the ground can be hard. There is no highlighting, or aim-assist. Because of the isometric view of this game, this is a problem. It gets better with experience, but doesn't feel entirely intentional. - "Auto-fire" is not explained via a tooltip, or example, or tutorial in the controls. There is a binding for it. It turns out it's only for specific weapons I do not know of yet. + The sound / music is great. I'd give it a ++ if I could appreciate music like most people. - Weapon aiming arcs fade. This looks pretty, but you do not know where things will land, having glowing markers on the ground for each shot would be great. This is likely semi-intentional as it creates a learning curve. BUUUT some weapons just have terrible arcs… Right now I can't use smoke grenades well and it bothers me. - Smoke grenades MIGHT (I need to play more) simply be badly implemented, more hassle than they are worth. * I bought this game on sale for $16 AU with the audiobook, I'm cheap as, and it seems good value to me.