Share. A supernatural action adventure overflowing with charm. A supernatural action adventure overflowing with charm.

Rebellion may have made a name for itself with the realistic ballistics and gruesome, testicle-popping kills of the Sniper Elite series, but with Strange Brigade, it feels like the Oxford-based developer has found its over-the-top, tea-swilling, alliteration-obsessed voice.

Colonial British sensibilities are the order of the day for this third-person co-op shooter. The four playable characters from the secret arm of the Department of Antiquities feel ripped from the pages of a 1930s pulp novella. There’s Nalangu Rushida, an African tribeswoman; Frank Fairburne, sharpshooter and relative to the protagonist of the Sniper Elite series; the mild-mannered scholar Professor Archimedes De Quincy; and a Manchester-raised boxer and factory worker by the name of Gracie Braithwaite. Reminiscent of Rosie the Riveter, seeing her uppercut a teleporting demon after telling them to “leave it out” in a thick Northern English accent quickly cemented her as my favourite. An accident at a North African dig site sets the story up and, as is often the way with video games, you’ll resolve it by shooting lots and lots of undead.

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It’s all very hackneyed and camp and there’s not much else to Strange Brigade’s story. The few cinematics take the form of pre-mission vignettes, styled after old-school movie teasers and complete with a delightfully over-the-top narrator. Levels have smatterings of collectable letters and diaries that flesh out characters and the world, but the moment-to-moment action doesn’t slow down for any of it.

Team and Crumpets

Strange Brigade’s labyrinthine crypts and forgotten, overgrown cities are explorable solo, or in four-player co-op. Playing alone is just that; there are no AI teammates to help or hinder you, and this gives you time to take in the expansive vistas and intricate theming of the levels. One particular mission has you exploring an ancient pirate cave that feels like the video game version of The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland.

It’s when you rope in friends that Strange Brigade really shines. The levels change depending on how many players you have in your party, with more enemies to fight and twists on existing puzzles to solve. One such puzzle early on, for example, requires you to walk across certain symbols in a particular order. When played solo this is a simple path, but in co-op the path is split so that multiple people need to complete it in order to progress. There’s an element of competition too, you’ll want to be the first to grab the spoils from the numerous gold packed chests as the booty isn’t shared across players.

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Each of the four characters in Strange Brigade share weapon unlocks, so you’ll never have to worry about switching from your favourite character to use a particular weapon. Likewise, their movement and basic abilities feel similar – Gracie’s melee ability is a brutal uppercut, for example, but it doesn’t feel any different to Professor Archimedes’ facepalm. It’s in Strange Brigade’s Amulet system, though, that each character’s personality shines through.

As you mow down waves of interchangeable zombies, mummies, and skeleton pirates they’ll drop souls which, when collected, slowly charge a devastating amulet power. Each character has four unique powers to unlock, and these range from AOE explosions to, erm, turning enemies into chickens. Some feel more useful than others, however. Frank’s power of crash-tackling an enemy and throwing them into a group is difficult to aim and hard to use, while Gracie’s auto-targeting “Thoth’s Angry Automaton” turret feels like a must-pick for all situations. The designers could’ve done a better job of making them all feel equally viable for different playstyles.

Unlocking these powers isn’t tied to a conventional XP or progression system. Instead, in each of the campaign’s nine levels you’ll come across locked tombs and treasure rooms that require you to complete some light puzzling to enter. Some will be simple combination locks with the solution hidden somewhere close by, while others could be a Pipe Mania-style puzzle or a game of memory. The puzzles are never overly difficult or obtuse and are a welcome distraction from the frantic action sequences. Inside you’ll find relics that are part of a set that, when completed, rewards you with a skill point. Linking collectibles and powers is an interesting idea that ties into the mystical nature of Strange Brigade, but the varying quality of the unlockable powers makes tracking down hard to find relics feel like a chore. During my playthrough I did run into a few instances where puzzles wouldn’t open even when given the correct solution, though a quick reset to the nearest checkpoint seemed to fix the issue.

There are also environmental puzzles to contend with, such as breakable barricades and scarab nests that need to be destroyed to get to the treasures beyond, and they all have rules that must be rigidly adhered to. If a flimsy wooden door is meant to be opened by a switch it cannot be destroyed, no matter how many grenades you throw at it – even though you’ve destroyed several similarly flimsy-looking doors before. Some levels have hidden chambers too that can only be opened by Professor Archimedes, which can be frustrating if your party is without his academic prowess.

Aside from puzzles, Strange Brigade’s levels are interconnected, arena-style combat encounters against waves of increasingly difficult enemies. These arenas are littered with traps that, when shot, unleash massive spinning blades or walls of flame. It’s immensely satisfying to lure a mob of shambling corpses into danger and watch as they’re quickly despatched by a giant, swinging log. I found myself overwhelmed by enemies more than once thanks in part to Strange Brigade’s subtle danger indicator. As groups of foes close in, shadowy hands encroach on the screen to indicate the direction of danger. The problem is these are easily missed as most of the time the screen is filled with explosions, souls, and more enemies. Tucked away in combat areas are chests that require gold to open and reward you with a unique weapon like a powerful blunderbuss that can annihilate a tough enemy in one shot or an upgraded version of a base weapon that bounces bullets off walls and ceilings.

Default weapons are purchasable in between levels with gold collected while out adventuring. Single-shot rifles, submachine guns, and shotguns all have their strengths and weaknesses and can be customised with collectible mystical gems. The gem system lets you tweak weapons to your play style or the needs of a particular situation at one of the many weapon workbenches in each level. By the end of my 12 or so hours with the campaign I’d managed to turn my run-of-the-mill rifle into a quick-firing, life-stealing, armour-piercing instrument of death that also froze enemies solid. Pumping round after round into Strange Brigade’s base enemies never gets old either, thanks to big, larger-than-life sound effects and animations. Seeing a line of skeletons explode into a shower of bones as coins and souls floated into my character and the omnipresent narrator quipped about my skills never failed to make me smile.

Undead-eye

Unfortunately, it’s in boss fights that the shortcomings of Strange Brigade’s gunplay become clear. Like most modern action games, aiming snaps to the closest enemy – but unlike something like Call of Duty, the snapping lasts for what feels like a nanosecond before drifting away, making you miss your shot if you instinctively assume it’ll behave like pretty much anything else you’ve played in the past decade or so. Hitting traps and some bosses’ weak points requires pixel-perfect accuracy, which becomes a trial of patience and luck rather than skill.

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Further exacerbating this problem is Strange Brigade’s lack of warning as to what a particular fight might require. An automatic rifle might be perfect for taking out the large mobs, but it lacks the accuracy to hit certain enemies’ weak points or distant targets. Particularly late in the campaign, I found myself in situations with the completely incorrect loadout. One such fight put me up against homing projectiles, something my burst rifle was ill suited to but would’ve been easy pickings for the spread shot of a shotgun. Eventually, I ended up opting for the single-round rifle as its accuracy became a requirement to deal with many of the late game bosses and projectile throwing enemies while playing solo.

The thing that pulled me through Strange Brigade’s campaign and had me tackling the extra horde and score attack modes, though, is its sense of style. This is thanks mostly to the charismatic narrator, whose extravagant commentary had me loudly guffawing in places. When a giant statue unleashes a powerful blast from its eyes he piped up with, “Quick Strange Brigade, take advantage of that fully operational death stare!” Pausing prompts him to dryly ask for “Tea, two sugars”, and his unexplained hatred for cats becomes a running joke. The playable characters’ one-liners are similarly fun and silly and help to keep the mood light. Menus are dripping in style, and the usual extras of character portraits and drawings of relics wouldn’t look out of place in a penny dreadful.