Strange Brigade is a pretty severe departure from Rebellion’s other more recent projects, Sniper Elite 4 and the Zombie Army series. It’s a much more pulpy, fun affair, dropping the seriousness of the other titles in favour of something ostensibly more British and light. But don’t let its 50’s radio play comedy stylings fool you; beneath that facade, there’s a very deep, very satisfying game that does everything a wave-based co-op shooter needs to do, and then some. The game describes itself as a ‘rip-roaring adventure’, so that should tell you everything you need to know about the setup here. Whilst we were playing the game, we were told that it was made with old-school pulp entertainment very much in mind. This presents itself pretty clearly when you’re dropped into the middle of an Egyptian ruin, brought to life with bright colours and some interesting, multi-layered level design. Mummy raise themselves from the ground and start throwing themselves at you. With up to three other players, you have to fend them off. To that end, you’re each given a primary weapon, a secondary weapon and a special ability in the form of a bar that charges the more damage you do. The game starts off gently - teasing you with a few shambling corpses - before ramping up the danger exponentially every wave: spike traps need to be avoided, bosses come out, enemies become more aggressive. Within minutes everything devolves into absolute chaos, and that desperate fight for survival is where Strange Brigade really shines. Once you activate your power - which is a different kind of effect for each of the four revealed characters - you can sort of ‘chain’ it: the more damage you do with it active, the more you’ll power up the bar again once it’s used up. Juggling this, your grenades, your guns and the occasional melee whilst leading enemies into attacks and maintaining enough distance to keep yourself from getting torn to shreds makes for a very satisfying, rhythmic game. A little like a third-person Left4Dead. With every kill, you gain currency. This currency can be used between zones to upgrade your guns or buy new ones entirely - on our way through the second zone, we managed to unlock a pretty powerful rifle that could one-shot most of the non-boss enemies. This made desperate times a little easier, especially when we got bottlenecked into a claustrophobic tomb and had to claw our way out as more and more undead spawned in. The tomb required us to solve a hieroglyphic puzzle before rewarding us with a box full of treasure. Going for it was a gamble that paid off, we’re glad to say. Strange Brigade is going to be the kind of game you’ll play on a Friday or Saturday night when all your mates are getting a bit lary, and you want something that isn’t too complex, isn’t too much for your brain to handle. It’s a good game to just chew on, if that makes sense - the same way you’d slap a cartoon on if you just fancied something not that taxing to watch. It plays easily, there’s no existential storyline to follow: it’s just good old-fashioned fun that’s totally not ashamed of what it is. Strange Brigade is going to win no awards for story, but it doesn’t want to. It just seems like it wants to give you and some friends the opportunity to throw yourself in a world or two where greedy undead hands are after your treasure and you’ve got to do everything you can to keep them away and escape with the booty. It’s light, fun co-op done properly, and we’re keen to see what the final game looks like when it launches in 2018. Source: Xbox Achievements
