Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Strange Brigade gets its hooks in early by putting you in crowded undead fights where simply shooting straight is only part of the answer. Mummies, armored minotaurs, giant scorpions, and Anubis warriors turn encounters into target-rich chaos, while grenades, environmental hazards, and supernatural amulets encourage you to look beyond the trigger. Sending enemies into rotating blades, fire, or boulders is exactly the kind of exaggerated payoff this game needs.

The best sessions come with a full four-person squad. Coordinating gunfire while somebody powers an amulet attack and somebody else spots a trap gives the action a scrappy, collaborative rhythm. You can tackle the campaign alone or online with up to four people, but solo play naturally loses some of that back-and-forth problem solving. If you enjoy the compact-team undead pressure of Left 4 Dead 2, this is a looser, more treasure-minded variation with magic and deadly ruins in the mix.

Between battles, puzzles and hidden treasure give you reasons to slow down and search the Egyptian ruins, tombs, dig sites, and caves. That change of pace helps, especially when you want a little scavenger-hunt energy instead of one more wave of enemies. Score Attack and Horde also give combat-focused groups more places to chase high-pressure runs. Still, the campaign leans heavily on arena encounters, so repetition sets in if you are waiting for the structure to keep reinventing itself.

Graphics

The third-person combat scenes have a pleasingly old-fashioned adventure scale: carved sandstone columns, tangled green vines, and sunlit jungle ruins frame bronze-armored undead under sharp yellow muzzle flashes. Ornate tomb carvings lend the locations more character than a plain series of shooting galleries.

The enemy designs do much of the visual heavy lifting. A towering black-and-gold jackal-headed guardian looks properly imposing beside small skeletons and crumbling wooden structures, while the hazy airship in the distance adds a fun pulp touch. Earthy stone ruins and muted enemy armor can blend together in busy fights, though, making the biggest threats easier to pick out than the crowd around them.

Story

The plot is happily direct: Seteki the Witch Queen has risen after four thousand years, and a secret-service band of adventurers heads into Egypt to stop her undead forces. It is a sturdy excuse to raid ruins and blast supernatural monsters, not a story built around major dramatic turns.

Its theatrical old-serial narrator makes the whole affair knowingly broad. The jokes and heightened delivery fit the mix of cursed tombs, strange relics, and oversized villains, giving the campaign a playful frame when the shooting pauses.

Do not come looking for a character drama. The four standard heroes are defined in play by their different magical amulets more than by an elaborate narrative arc. That is not a flaw when you want a light co-op yarn, but it means the story mainly succeeds as momentum between firefights and treasure hunts.

Overall Experience

Strange Brigade is at its best when you treat it like a Saturday-matinee co-op hangout. The moment-to-moment pleasure is not just killing undead, but turning a crowded encounter into a chain of gunfire, explosions, traps, and soul-powered attacks. The first hour makes that formula clear, and it remains entertaining as long as your group enjoys squeezing different solutions from familiar combat spaces.

The tradeoff is equally clear. Light puzzles and hidden loot break up the action, but they do not fully erase the sense of returning to another arena full of enemies. If repeated encounters drain you quickly, the game’s cheerful attitude will not suddenly turn it into a more varied action adventure.

Give it a chance if you want a cooperative supernatural shooter with a sense of humor and enough side activity to keep you looking around the ruins. It is easier to recommend with friends than as a solo commitment, and it has a clear sense of what it wants to be. For the original pitch behind that approach, Rebellion’s original developer introduction lays out the cooperative supernatural adventure at the center of the game.

Retro Replay Score

7.1/10