Battle beastly baddies in this rip-roaring 1930s adventure shooter

TREASURE, mummies, gunfire, adventure and a quirky cast of heroes — Strange Brigade has it all, wrapped up in a thrilling 1930s package.

EVERYONE loves a good adventure story, especially if there’s treasure involved.

The only thing better than a treasure hunting adventure is a treasure hunting adventure set in the 1930s — so the folks at Rebellion have hit upon a capital idea with their new PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game Strange Brigade.

In a nutshell, the game takes its cues from interwar adventure serials of the kind that inspired the Indiana Jones movies, but rather than playing it straight, the developers are having some fun with the whole concept — and doing a magnificent job.

Take the Brendan Fraser version of The Mummy, add a uniquely British ‘Ripping Yarn’ twist to it, then get Stephen Toast to narrate the whole thing. Yes, Clem Fandango, we can hear you — and by Jove, the boffins at Rebellion have really hit this one for six.

The titular brigade comprise five characters at launch — Frank Fairburne, a soldier with “the coldest eyes in the Empire”, Gracie Braithwaite, a northern English engineer with a fondness for explosives, Professor Archimedes De Quincey who has an affinity for the mysterious magic, Nalangu Rushida, a demon-hunting Masai warrior, and gentleman-explorer Winston Bey, with other characters joining the Brigade post-launch.

The levels are well designed — the Sniper Elite influences are clear — and full of puzzles and traps you can trigger (by shooting, naturally) to do things like impale, burn, or slice up the walking dead as they try to stop you from reaching your goal.

You can also team up with friends to take on the campaign.

But the star of the whole thing really is the Narrator, voiced by Glen McReady. Absolutely nailing the “Cynical 1930s Adventure Serial and Newsreel Announcer” voice, his dry observations and playful commentary lifted Strange Brigade from being a very good horde shooter to a superlative piece of entertainment.

There are not many games that have actually made me laugh out loud while playing them, but Strange Brigade achieved that admirable feat on numerous occasions.

It’s abundantly clear that everyone involved in the game had a marvellous time putting it together while lovingly poking fun at a genre historically famous for taking itself far too seriously.

The characters themselves don’t quite break the fourth wall, but certainly lean on it heavily, while the Narrator makes numerous explicit references to the whole thing being a game, including noting, “There is a pause button, you know,” if you leave a character standing around idle too long.

Strange Brigade doesn’t take itself too seriously.

One of the game’s achievements is called “It’s Not Stealing If You Put It In A Museum” and the academic character Professor De Quincy gleefully notes that treasure he’s found is “research funds” with a gleam in his eye — in other words, the game makes it very clear they’re not taking things completely seriously and neither should you.

As hilarious and entertaining as Strange Brigade is, it isn’t without its flaws. It’s a very linear game, so you don’t actually get to do a great deal of exploring — so if you were hoping for Uncharted: Biggles, Ginger and Algy Go Tomb Raiding I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.

This lack of explorability even extends to not being able to leap over railings or make your way past obstacles which really shouldn’t be an impediment to people with copious quantities of dynamite and a magic amulet of ancient and mysterious power.

Checkpoints aren’t always especially well placed either, resulting in some ’90s-era flashbacks of having to redo chunks of a level because you got killed in the wrong place or a few seconds before the final boss of a multi-wave fight went down.

There’s also not a vast amount of difference between the different characters — you can pick and choose which guns you want (after you unlock them in-game), and since all the characters can use any unlocked guns, their major points of difference become their amulet power (and it’s possible to unlock additional amulets) and which type of thrown explosive they use.

Despite what the settings say, I couldn’t see any evidence of an auto-aim function on the PlayStation 4 version I reviewed either, meaning a lot of boss battles required maddeningly precise shots to hit a small, glowing orb in a key location on the body of a moving, attacking target — all while hordes of cadaverous horrors are swarming you as well.

Taking on the boss characters can be difficult.

The sound in Strange Brigade is top-drawer, though, and the developers have put a lot of effort into making it an integral part of the game. The audio cues in particular are very well done, including the other-worldly “meow” of collectable cat statues (letting you know they are nearby), the gentle chiming of ammunition knapsacks to facilitate resupply, and the growl of the undead as they approach. The gunfire effects are also extremely good — a .303 rifle has a distinctive report when fired and this is recreated perfectly in the game, and it’s small touches like that which make the audio a surprising standout.

Of course, the best kind of adventure involves your friends and Strange Brigade is no slouch in that department, letting you team up with mates in co-op to take on the campaign — with more enemies, of course. Multiple players allows for different approaches to enemies — such as one player distracting a boss while the other tries to damage the enemy.

In addition to the main campaign, whereby the Brigade are searching for a lost archaeological expedition and trying to destroy the ancient cursed horror it has unleashed, there are two additional game modes at launch: Horde and Score Attack.

Horde mode involves fighting off waves of enemies, while Score Attack is basically a speedrun through section of a level, killing as many baddies as possible to keep your score combo up — with other challenges in there as well.

The best kinds of artwork hold a mirror up to society or their subject, and Strange Brigade not only holds up that mirror, it then uses it to reflect magic beams from a mysterious crystal into a statue so you can go and loot treasure from the temple it guards.

There’s a lot of potential in the IP as well, so I am very much hoping we’ll be seeing (and playing) more of the Strange Brigade’s adventures in the future.

If, like me, your library is full of Biggles, Flashman and Bulldog Drummond books, and you love period adventure movies series like Indiana Jones or The Mummy, then it is imperative you make your way to your nearest purveyor of electronic games and acquire a copy of Strange Brigade with as much haste as your conveyance, internet and/or funds will allow.

Originally published as Battle beastly baddies in this rip-roaring 1930s adventure shooter