Strange Brigade was a game that I completely missed hearing about this E3, but when I did finally discover it, I was immediately intrigued. You see, every year there are those standout titles, your “AA” games that don’t get the advertising, the coverage, and all the hype that your big franchises do. I have found over time that it’s often these AA caliber games that I like the most, not the indies or the AAAs, but pretty much right there in there in the middle. It’s often here that you get a perfect blend of innovation, new IP, and yet a big enough budget and enough dev skill to pull off something fresh, fun, interesting — even if it isn’t genre-defining or changing, a phrase I find it hard not to roll my eyes at. In my estimation, there is always room in any genre for another solid, interesting release. I digress.
That Strange Brigade was made by industry veterans Rebellion — makers of the excellent Sniper Elite franchise (the original of which remains one of my top co-op Xbox experiences) as well as the classic Aliens Vs Predator before that — added yet more intrigue. Moreover, who doesn’t like a great co-op adventure, which Strange Brigade appeared to be in a snap judgement based off of screenshots and trailers? As most gamers will attest to, a fun co-op experience can easily make up for shortcomings in a game, be it technical or design/execution-based shortcomings (or both). I have found the same is true with Strange Brigade.
Before getting ahead of myself (or partaking in another tempting tangent), Strange Brigade is a totally new IP that features distinct playable characters who have teamed up to defeat a rising army of the undead. Some ill-advised explorers opened a tomb that had been sealed for some 4,000 years, unleashing an Egyptian Witch Queen known as Seteki. With her come all sorts of monsters, from skeletons to minotaurs, evil tribesman to mummies, huge scorpions, and much more. Set in the 1930s, the Brigade dive right in to put Seteki and her minons back into the ground, using a variety of guns, explosives, environmental traps, and special attacks. Delightfully, the story tends to stay pretty relevant and interesting during the campaign as opposed to just falling off a couple of hours in. Anyhow, always outnumbered, the Brigade relies on teamwork and firepower to repel the evil hordes. Note that you can actually play this solo if you so choose. My advice? Don’t. This is a co-op experience through and through, the only real shame of it is that there is no local multiplayer support at all. Surely a PS4 Pro could handle a two player split screen I would think, but, unfortunately, this option is not available. You can, however, select to run at an uncapped framerate instead of being locked at 30fps, but my point is that there are no local multiplayer / couch co-op modes here, which is a shame.
Playing the campaign solo is really too tedious to bother with if you ask me. And that’s not a knock on the game so much as just a reminder that, seriously now, this is really meant to be played co-op. You can jump in or make host your own game and play with random folks online, but obviously the better route is to team up with at least one, if not three, friends with their own copies (MSRP of $50 by the way, that’s better than $60). Through the ages, countless games were made more fun by simply making them co-op, so it should come as no surprise that Strange Brigade is a drastically more enjoyable experience when played that way.
With that made (overly) clear, no matter how you end up playing Strange Brigade, there are several gameplay mechanics to be aware of. First, the game is played in the third person, and players wield three weapon types. This includes a basic, last resort pistol or sidearm that has infinite bullets, and a primary weapon such as a machine gun, shotgun, or long gun. You also have explosives, including a few grenade types and dynamite, which takes several seconds to detonate, but boy when it does! The explosives have a cooldown timer that keeps you from spamming them, but it also keeps you from running out of them entirely for long, too. The primary weapon does have a fixed bullet count, but, typically, replenishing ammo is easy to do. Each player also has a melee attack which is indeed effective, be it a big roundhouse kick or an upward palm-fist (just depends on your character of choice). You also have special abilities via the amulet, which is the blue gauge in the middle of the screen. It fills as you gather the souls of the undead, which you’ve made dead again. Using R2 can help pull in these souls quicker, although it leaves you vulnerable to attack. Special attacks are great for crowd control and shifting the tide of battle, especially in the midst of a wave of foes in Horde mode. And last but certainly not least, there are special weapon chests in the campaign and other modes that provide short term access to experimental weapons like flame throwers and electrified guns. These cost money and only last as long as the ammo they contain out of the box.
As you kill Seteki’s forces and explore the map, you’ll discover more coins that can be used to purchase different weapons. Blueprints for other weapons and special upgrade gems can be found and slotted into weapons too, giving bonuses like reduced recoil and ricochet. Player appearance, voices, and some attributes vary amongst the Brigade which encourages replay and experimentation, a plus. Keep an eye out for shootable traps, like massive spinning blades, fire pits, and other aids that, if used correctly, can dish out a lot of damage (to the enemy, but also to your comrades if you’re not careful). Oh, and various puzzles types — like shootable buttons and completing circuits/pipe flow within the campaign to unlock doors and such things, are also on the menu. These are simple and accessible enough that they mix up the pacing without slowing the action down.
In addition to the Campaign, there are two other modes, Score Attack and Horde. Score Attack puts you in a condensed area from the campaign and the point is to get as many kills as quickly as you can — it’s not bad. Horde, which I preferred over Score Attack, puts you and your buddies against wave after wave of increasingly tougher enemies. You have the option, if you’re quick about it, to change up your loadout in between waves. You can also pay several thousand coins to unlock new parts of the map, expanding the playable area and revealing more goodies like health potions and upgrade gems.
On the whole, Strange Brigade looks and sounds very good. I thought the level design captured the adventurous, yet dangerous Egyptian-themed atmosphere that many of us probably imagine from the Indiana Jones movies. This game also has a British-accented narrator that often cracks jokes or makes comments about events going on at that moment in the game. This is easily something that could have become tiresome and annoying, but Rebellion walked a fine line here and I found the narrator “character” to be more of a plus than not, as he gives this game that extra sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude that it portrays in other ways. It’s that kind of confidence that, “no, we’re not trying to reinvent the genre, we’re just here to have a fun time in co-op.” And I don’t know about you, but at the end of the day, the reason I play videogames is for fun, and if that’s fun that is shared with friends and family, all the better.
In conclusion, Strange Brigade gets much more right than it does wrong, and it proves the power of co-op yet again. Played alone, this game isn’t worth the time or effort due to the tedium. However, add in a friend or three, or at least some decent randos, and suddenly the game takes on a whole new feel and it instantly becomes a treat. It’s certainly not the first game to prove this phenomenon, but nevertheless, if you have some buddies to play with, keep Strange Brigade on your radar.
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