Strange Brigade

An awesome experience to live the action and adventures of the 30's with a lovely TV style and thousands of bullets all around... and of course, tons of humor for 4 players.

The first steps in this game aren't that special, but as soon as you get a hold of things and you can find a few friends to play with, the mummies from Strange Brigade really come to life.

Strange Brigade’s serviceable but flawed gameplay and forgettable story make for an incredibly generic third-person shooter, but its charming personality, great level design, and well integrated puzzles make for a B-movie romp that’s a lot more fun than you might initially expect, even if you plan to play alone.

There’s enough charm here to paper over some of the game’s fairly substantial cracks, and it’s easily one of the more unique and better cooperative shooters that owe Valve a fruit basket for Left 4 Dead.

Strange Brigade is one of those difficult games to review, the one where for every positive thing you have to say about it, there’s a downside related to or accompanying it in some way or another. But in the end, what we have here is still some classic shooter action best enjoyed with friends, with enough eye-catching style and various challenges to potentially keep players coming back for more. So much like the pulp stories it aims to emulate, one could say that it’s corny and flawed in several aspects, but still an enjoyable romp that can be worth checking out under the right circumstances.

It may occasionally feel like a relic, but like the members of the Strange Brigade have shown, sometimes that’s just what you’re looking for.

While far from revolutionary, Strange Brigade makes it hard to dismiss it as “just another horde shooter”. The pulpy adventure aesthetic and the focus on the use of traps are a definite draw, and while a more interesting, self-aware story would have been nice to see, it’s the satisfying shooting, well implemented online co-op, and interesting game mode variants that help stave off the tedious repetition that quickly end up haunting many horde shooters.

Strange Brigade stays close to Rebellion's third-person formula but doesn't add enough to it to be a truly great game. The pulpy, humor delivered with a wink and nudge saves the game from being a slog.

If Strange Brigade has the good idea to offer an original set and tone in the kind of cooperative shooter, it does so either too late or too bad, but in any case, it does not fully convince. Especially against the competition already in place.

A pleasingly straightforward co-op shooter, whose lack of complications will be seen as either a blessing or a curse depending on your requirements as a gamer.