Strange Brigade

Is This Co-op Shooter A Treasure, Or A Bit Of A Relic?

- Chris Burke

Mummy! There are a lot of undead creatures wrapped in bandages coming towards us, and we’re down to our last bit of health before it’s bye-bye daft British colonial-era adventurer chap. Luckily, our three hardy companions are on hand to help knock these dead Ancient Egyptian blighters for six, and sally forth for some more rip-roaring adventures in Rebellion’s tongue-in-cheek co-op shooter. Tally ho, and put the kettle on.

‘Old fashioned’ is the best way to describe Strange Brigade. Stylistically it’s pitched somewhere between Indiana Jones and the 1930s chapter serials that inspired his films, and the tea-and-crumpets Britishness of old Boys’ Own adventure stories. The gameplay itself is also comfortingly familiar, in the way that ‘old fashioned’ things usually are. Fundamentally it’s a Metroidvania style puzzle-shooter involving zombies. Not exactly the most out-there premise in Xbox-land. But where it doesn’t exactly innovate so much as get things right, is in its four-player experience, as you and three mates run around blasting mummies and giant scorpions with blunderbusses, revolvers and clonky old sub-machine guns.

Strange brew

The Strange Brigade are mystery-solving mercenaries who have left the drab grey, austere reality of 1930s Britain to travel the world in a giant airship, parachuting into a colourful Africa not to colonise the shit out of it, but rather fight hordes of undead that have been raised by a malevolent Ancient Egyptian Witch Queen.