"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."
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 entirety 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 humorous.
I would love to see more games have a humorous narrator. It helps bring flavour to a horde shooter with added puzzles and minor exploration.
While paying £64.99 for a multiplayer-focused title and season pass in 2023 would be viewed as a bargain, gamers in 2018 could not wrap their heads 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 three-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” narrative to become the accepted one, and what could and should have been the start of a beloved franchise was the death of one.
Due to the poor reception of Strange Brigade, which saw it struggle to reach 1,900 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 Strange Brigade, and Rebellion has not entirely forgotten its brilliant but poorly received title.
Strange Brigade is a first person shooter game developed and published by Rebellion Developments, it released on 27 August 2018, and is available on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
Strange Brigade supports:
Strange Brigade offers the following matchmaking options:
Strange Brigade supports the following peripherals:
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.
We found Strange Brigade to be a great game, meaning it delivers a memorable experience with only minor imperfections that don't detract from the overall enjoyment of the game.
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