Co-op shooting and mummy puzzles hold up better than the jokes

Rebellion Developments built Strange Brigade for people who like their shooting galleries with a side of archaeology. The 2018 cooperative third-person shooter sends four explorers into 1930s Egypt to blast mummies, giant scorpions and minotaurs, and it works best when three friends are standing beside you.

Trailer, via Strange Brigade.

Seteki and the Nameless Tomb

The setup is pure pulp. Seteki, an Egyptian Pharaoh erased from history and buried for 4,000 years, rises again after the archaeologist Edgar Harbin opens her tomb to further his career. The Department of Antiquities dispatches the Strange Brigade, a team trained to defend the British Empire from supernatural threats, to find out what she wants.

Veronica Brownring, an agent of the Department of Antiquities, was watching Harbin. She got a distress message out before Seteki’s release.

Four Explorers, One Arsenal

Each of the four playable characters carries different weapons and abilities, and all of them can be customized. The arsenal is large, and every gun has upgrade slots. Workbenches inside a level let you switch and improve weapons on the spot.

• Spinning blades and spikes you can trigger to kill enemies
• Branching levels that reward exploration
• Relics that unlock amulet powers
• Treasure chests holding prototype weapons

Amulet powers run on souls absorbed from dead enemies. Gold coins buy new weapons. The loop is simple and it holds up.

Why Co-op Carries This

Strange Brigade is a third-person shooter with a huge emphasis on cooperation, and that emphasis is the whole point. Solo, the branching levels and puzzle rooms feel thin. With a full squad, the traps, the relic hunting and the back-to-back fighting against Seteki’s army of mummified monstrosities turn into something loud and genuinely fun.

The Soul Cages

The campaign follows the Brigade across Egypt to destroy the soul cages feeding Seteki’s power. Here is how the back half runs:

1. The team finds a hidden valley and a soul cage Seteki is using to harness trapped souls.
2. Destroying it reduces her power, so the Brigade sets out to destroy the rest.
3. After the last cage falls, the team learns Seteki is still loose and may be planning to open a bridge between the mortal realm and the Underworld.
4. They follow her down, break her control over Ammit, the Devourer of Souls, and the beast turns on her and devours her.

That ending is the right kind of silly. The game never pretends to be more than a co-op shooter with a 1930s adventure skin, and it does not need to.

Where It Lands

The weaknesses are real. The puzzle solving is light, the four characters differ less than the marketing suggests, and the whole thing leans hard on having other people to play with. Rebellion shipped it across PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One on 28 August 2018, then Stadia on 1 August 2020 and Nintendo Switch on 15 June 2021, and the mixed critical reception tracks with that unevenness.

Strange Brigade is not a landmark. It is a solid, well-built co-op shooter that knows its own pleasures and delivers them without fuss.

co-op shooter · game review · PS4 · Rebellion Developments · Strange Brigade · third-person shooter