Strange Brigade is Rebellion’s newest title and follows four heroes through a journey of epic proportions. It’s absurd, outrageous, cheeky, a ton of fun. If you’re looking for your new favorite four player co-op shooter, keep reading.
Set in a goofy and somewhat still slightly terrifying 1930s environment, Strange Brigade is the story of a team of adventurers. They’re in Egypt, and Seteki the Witch Queen is back from the dead. Along with her comes a horde of her undead fiends in a variety of forms. You’ll face mummies, zombies, and plenty of other not-so-living enemies through the course of the title as you attempt to put her in her place.
Characters
In Strange Brigade, you’ll play as one of four characters. There are quite the variety to choose from and, even though we don’t normally spell them out, it’s important that we tell you about them as their personalities shine through more than the average. They are…
Nalangu Rushida
Nalangu is by far the character that’s the furthest from those we’re used to seeing in games, and she’s great. She’s incredibly spiritual and often looks to the supernatural to guide her way. Dressed in the garb of her people, Nalangu is set far apart in both looks and ability. She’s not more powered than the other characters, but her default load out is killer.
Frank Fairburne
Frank is a pretty no nonsense kind of guy and his dialogue is often a bit more terse than the rest. Armed with a sniper rifle that rips right through your enemies, Frank is a great shot at range, but not worth a ton up front.
Gracie Braithwaite
If Gracie were American, she might as well be Rosie the Riveter. Her charming but tough attitude is a plus that you won’t get with any other character. Her default amulet power is incredibly useful and is a bit different than that of anyone else.
Professor Archimedes De Quincey
The Professor is a bit of a bookworm with a twist. He’ll surprise you with his love and affinity for magic and the powers within, and he means business when it comes to putting down some bad guys.
Now, basically everything we just said that pertains to weapons, specials (Amulet powers), loadouts, etc. is obsolete if you like to modify your character. Before you begin each mission you can choose which weapons and attributes the character you’ve selected will be wielding. It makes for a great opportunity to mix and match your team’s powers for maximum impact.
Gameplay
After selecting your characters and the stage of the journey you’ll be tackling, your team will drop (literally) into the fight. Essentially, you’ll be killing bad guys and solving puzzles – that’s the whole game. But to reduce it to such a trivial explanation would be doing Strange Brigade a great disservice.
Your character can move, run, roll, stomp, punch/kick, throw grenades, shoot, and activate different points in the stage. In addition to beating up bad guys, you’re also working towards unlocking new areas and collecting journals, treasure, and clues to help you in your goal. If you want to take out a group of zombies all at once, try your luck at luring them in front of a trap that you activate to eliminate them. Perhaps you’ll need to maneuver your way through a giant board of flips and switches in an order you can only determine by experimentation so that you may progress to the next stage.
The advantage that Strange Brigade has, in addition to a great co-op experience, is that the gameplay is relatively similar all throughout each stage. Unfortunately, that’s also the disadvantage of Strange Brigade. If you’ve played one level, you’ve played them all – a slight change of scenery and some differing puzzles excluded. This isn’t a bad thing if you like what you’re doing, but it doesn’t really innovate or move things forward. That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun though.
Traps are a big piece of what makes the game feel cool. There are various spikes, flames, swinging logs and blades, and much more that you can use to your advantage when beating down the bad guys. The traps are creative and you will have to be incredibly aware of your surroundings to find them all. Similarly to the rest of the content though, once you’ve seen them you’re pretty much set. There’s not a lot of further innovation in this department – but there IS something incredibly satisfying about seeing a ton of zombies get crushed by a swinging log.
As you defeat enemies and unlock chests, you gain currency. This currency can be used to reward you handsomely with new weapons that you can keep unlocked. In addition there are other weapons that are unlocked and extremely powerful that only last until the ammo inside of them has been depleted. These are heavy hitters, and you’ll want to be sure to use them wisely.
Narrator
A huge part of Strange Brigade is the unnamed narrator and his pep talks. The narrator details both the moment to moment gameplay as well as the cut scenes in between stages. A lot of the comic relief for Strange Brigade comes form his musings, but it’s easy to see how he could be annoying to some – a complaint I heard from someone I didn’t know when playing co-op together.
Not only is the narrator simply commenting on things, but he is also giving you hints and tricks from time to time in order to help you to progress. There are also instances where he’s giving story beats and even seems to be aware he is part of a game at times. It’s pretty charming, a huge component of what makes the game unique.
Co-Op
As mentioned previously, what makes this third-person co-op shooter tick is the four player nature of it. You can play with friends or set up your game for random folks to jump in.
Because we had Strange Brigade before release, there weren’t a whole lot of other people available to play alongside. My experience was largely played alone and never with more than three total players. I have no doubt this influenced my gameplay in certain aspects, so we’re being as transparent about it as possible.
Though we couldn’t confirm it for certain, it seems that the difficulty of Strange Brigade scales up and down with the amount of players you have in your party. It’s a slight change, if any, but is important to note.
Co-op is incredibly important to Strange Brigade and is really what makes the game tick. Traps are easier to avoid, puzzles are (mostly) easier to solve, and enemies are easier to defeat when you’re playing with others as compared to playing by yourself. This doesn’t mean playing alone is bad, it’s just a lot better when you play with others.
Other Modes
There are two other modes in Strange Brigade that are not story driven. They are “Score Attack” and “Horde.”
Horde is pretty self explanatory if you’ve ever played a horde mode in another game in the past. Strange Brigade not only has you facing wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies, but also allows you to earn currency as you take them down. This currency can be used to buy weapons or unlock new areas of the map. It’s a ton of fun, and the power-ups and environmental traps make it all the better.
We didn’t have the opportunity to play Score Attack before writing this review, but according to the game’s website – it is a mode that relies on speed and accuracy. You’ll want to mow through enemies as fast as possible to keep your score multiplier up. There are some cool bonuses to pick up, such as no damage runs, headhshots in succession, etc.
Recommendation
We think Strange Brigade is a lot of fun. It’s not the most intriguing story you’ve ever experienced, but there is a little something there to sink your teeth into. The game doesn’t do anything particularly new, both as a game as well as from level to level, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. If you’ve got a few friends and you want to explore together, that’s where you’ll find the most enjoyment. The puzzles are fascinating, the enemies are intriguing, and the narrator is a great mechanic we’d love to see more of. Overall, we’d suggest you give Strange Brigade a try, but make sure you know what you’re looking at first to keep your expectations in check.
*Strange Brigade was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
