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.
Source: IGN.com Strange Brigade Review