It’s not often that titles with fabulous review scores and critical acclaim die within days of launch, but that is exactly what happened to Strange Brigade in 2018.
Singleplayer.
Co-op Multiplayer.
Rebellion is well-loved in the gaming community for the Sniper Elite, Evil Genius and Zombie Army franchises; however, even developers with successful IPs desire to spread their wings and try something different, and for Rebellion, that was Strange Brigade.
With engaging gameplay, fantastic combat, stunning visuals and genuinely funny dialogue, Strange Brigade should have succeeded. In all aspects apart from growing a sustainable community, it did, with players and critics alike singing its praises and making it one of the few “dead on arrival” titles to continually receive positive reviews long after its “demise”, with 85% of Steam reviews being positive as of August 2022.
The entity of Strange Brigade can be played as a single-player experience. While the narrative is rather weak, the narrator is excellent and makes even the most mundane accomplishment humourous.
I would love to see more games have a humourous narrator. It helps bring flavour to a horde shooter with added puzzles and minor exploration.
Business Model.
While paying £64.99 for a multiplayer-focused title + season pass in 2023 would be viewed as a bargain, gamers in 2018 could not wrap their head around paying £39.99 for the game itself, only to turn around and need to pay an additional £25 to unlock the DLC.
On paper, I agree with them; season passes are normally substantially cheaper than the base game; however, in the case of Strange Brigade, it cost a whopping 62% (£24.99) of the base game price when purchased as part of the deluxe package or an astonishing 75%(£29.99) of the base game price when purchased separately.
Players felt insulted by this business model and stayed away from Strange Brigade in droves, despite the season pass providing good value for money with five new characters, a brand new 3-part campaign in a new setting (pirate) and a selection of exclusive weapons and items.
While much of the outcry was focused around the PC community, it did not take long for the “Strange Brigade is dead and the developers are greedy” to become the accepted narrative, and what could and should have been the start of a beloved franchise was the death of one.
Strange Brigade is a third person shooter video game developed and published by Rebellion, it was released on 28 August 2018 and retails for $49.99.
Strange Brigade is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Due to the poor reception of Strange Brigade, which saw it struggle to reach 1900 players at launch on PC, Rebellion quickly moved onto other projects, and Strange Brigade received its last content update a mere three months after release, or so it would seem.
After over a year of no development activity, Strange Brigade was ported to Stadia in August 2020 and Nintendo Switch in June 2021.
While these ports have not benefited any other platform or the community in general, it shows someone is still working on the Strange Brigade, and Rebellion has not entirely forgotten its brilliant but poorly received title.
PC Community: In October 2023, Rebellion put Strange Brigade on sale for 95% off, resulting in a massive influx of players and a new all-time high concurrent user count of 22,318 concurrent players.
PlayStation Community: Multiplayer games traditionally do much better on PlayStation due to the massive player base; combined with frequent sales and even PS Plus promotions, it’s safe to assume the player base peaks at around 250-500 players.
Xbox Community: Having twice been on Xbox Game Pass and receiving frequent discounts, it is safe to assume the Xbox Strange Brigade community is a similar size to the PlayStation community; however, I would estimate it would be on the lower end of the scale with 200-300 players at online at peak each day.
The Nintendo Switch is volatile to predict accurately. However, it is believed to be comparable to other consoles.
While Strange Brigade is not doing well on console with even and rarely peaks above 300 concurrent users due to a very successful 95% off sale on Steam, Strange Brigade is buzzing on PC, with off-peak heights of 7k+ and 24-hour peaks well north of 20k.
On average Strange Brigade takes between 9 and 28 hours to complete.
Estimated completion times are derived from various sources and may vary based on the skill level of each player.
Strange Brigade supports:
Strange Brigade offers the following matchmaking options:
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Strange Brigade is rated PEGI 16+ and contains:
I like Strange Brigade and would gladly purchase it again today at sale prices. Still, due to its severely diminished player base on most platforms, I cannot recommend anyone purchase it at full price in 2023 unless they have a group of friends willing to do the same.
