Developed by: Rebellion
Platforms: PS4 / XBOX One / PC
Genre: Third Person Shooter
Release Date: August 28, 2018
BunnyGaming got the opportunity to sit down and play the first level of the Strange Brigade titled, Harbin’s Dig Site and I would like to share with you our initial impressions on this upcoming release. For a brief overview of the game please refer to the article posted earlier here. The game is set in the 1930’s and an expedition in Egypt searching for the tomb of Seteki has suddenly gone quiet. It’s up to the Strange Brigade! (always emphatically narrated) to get on the case and solve this confounding mystery.
Casual and beautiful.
Right off the bat, I love how the game doesn’t take itself too seriously and is going for the campy, adventurous vibe reminiscent of movies from years past like Indiana Jones or The Mummy. I chose to start with Professor Archimedes de Quincy as he has a special ability to discover secret doors and my inner treasure hunter could not resist finding some secret loot. As soon as I was able to control my character and start the adventure I noticed that the game itself looks great. It is bright, beautiful and the level is a huge playground to roam around fighting undead monsters and stumbling upon treasures. What surprised me the most was how steady the framerate was at 60 fps on the PS4 PRO looking the way it does.
Puzzles, Power-ups and Collectibles.
Throughout the level also I discovered journals adding to the characterizations of the 4 main characters, the ongoing story arc, as well as the villain of the game Seteki and how she came to be. Besides the journals, I also found a unique chest that requires gold to unlock. In these chests are random, finite use powerful weapons like grenade launchers or sniper rifles. Speaking of which, gold is earned through exploring and opening chests scattered around the map and also the killing of the undead. I do believe that the gold amount is random though as some chests offer more gold than others. There are also puzzles (4 in total) if I am not mistaken that is not too difficult for the player to solve to obtain the valuable relics that can augment the way you play as collecting enough of them will enable the player to unlock more amulet powers to use. I definitely took my time to search for them as those powers are fun! Using the guns feel good and I never ran out of ammo as there are ammo packs conveniently placed around every corner.
Enemies…
I also quite enjoyed how the game slowly introduced new types of enemies to give more variation to the fiendish troublemakers in your way to take down and by the looks of it, it seems like there will be LOADS of them ranging from the undead, armoured undead, scorpions and mummies! (GASP!). At the end of the level, I discovered that Seteki the great evil has been accidentally released and it is up to the Strange Brigade! to travel all over the glove to thwart her nefarious schemes.
Looking forward to the game.
The game really reminds me of Left 4 Dead in that having that co-op experience with another player mowing down hordes of enemies and slowly working your way towards the goal. Although at the time of writing as the game has not been released yet I was unable to try the online-only co-op experience to experience it first-hand. I wish I could as this game seems like it would be a heck of a lot of fun with 3 other friends to play with. So far the game definitely makes me hungry for more and I cannot wait to see how far the adventures in the game will take me.
Till then stay tuned for our full review of Strange Brigade on the 27th of August.
